Eternity In An Hour
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: A hundred years ago, Jubilee's mistake caused Kurt and Ororo's deaths and tore her and Logan apart. So she jumps to our dimension to prevent it from happening again. Sounds better than the summary. Read, review please! Thank you!
1. Default Chapter

**Author's Note:** There are two versions of this story, one titled 'Project Nightshade' written by Scurifer, and this version, titled 'Eternity In An Hour', written by me. How that came about is a long story; suffice it to say that my story inspired him to write his version. It should be coming soon; check for it! And please, let us know what you think of our respective versions via the review system or email, whichever is more convenient. Your comments help keep us writing more good stories for you all!Jaenelle

Chapter 1: Jubilee 2104

_The cell was dark, and perpetually cold; a torture in and of itself. The little Chinese girl chained to the far wall arched her back away from the cold—concrete? stone? She didn't know—and tried to control her shivering. She would have wrapped her arms around her body, trying to conserve heat…but her hands were pulled over her head to the wall and shackled. The metal cuffs were pulled too tight, and inside the steel ball-like mitts on her hands, her fingers had curled into numb, useless claws that throbbed constantly, painfully, from their lack of circulation._

_She was sure they were permanently damaged by now. After the days—how many?—of imprisonment, she could no longer feel the tips of her fingers pressed against the cold steel. Her face itched under the heavy black hood wrapped around her head; air came from a tube under her nose. Several times her captors had cut off air to the tube until she blacked out; they seemed to take special delight in tormenting her like that. And her feet hurt from standing all this time; she had been chained standing, and they hadn't let her down. Her legs wobbled under her, threatening to collapse._

_The cold was also made worse by the fact that she was almost nude. She wore nothing except her bra and shorts. They hadn't—thank God—raped her, but with her arms shackled over her head she wouldn't have been able to prevent them if they had. Instead, they had taped electrodes to her skin, using electricity to shock her awake and keep her from sleeping. She hadn't slept since she'd come, nor had she eaten or drank. Thirst tormented her, so much so that she tried to lick her own tears off her face for something, anything, to ease the parched throat. Hunger was an ever-present, sharp pain in her belly._

_She stared ahead of her into darkness. The hood had glassy, transparent lenses over her eyes, enabling her to see, but there wasn't much to see. Just unending, unrelieved blackness, broken only occasionally by one of her captors entering to give her the intense, agonizing shocks that kept her awake, or to change the tape in the machine whose headphones ran up to her ears. It said awful things to her; that she was filthy, dirty, that mutants like her were horrible abominations not fit to walk the earth with regular humans, and other such anti-mutant propaganda. She tried to block it out, but it was hard._

_She was getting too weak and disoriented from the sleep deprivation; it was only a matter of time before she died from this abuse and from dehydration. She could only hope that, somewhere out there, the X-Men, particularly Logan, would find her. Not that she had much hope; she knew this place, this cell, well. She was back in the Hulkbuster base, and the man holding her was one who had participated in her capture and torture by Bastion before._

_"I'm not going to touch your filthy mutie carcass," he'd sneered elegantly at her when he had come to see her. "Two of my brothers were among the people your friends killed when they broke out. I want payback. You're going to be the bait that brings them back here and I'm going to kill them. Then I'll kill you. You're not leaving here until you're dead, girlie." And now death was a real possibility. The X-Men hadn't found her here before; would they even think to look here for her again?_

_She started to slip into sleep again. It had gotten to the point where she tried to keep herself awake, desperately wanting to avoid the agonizing shocks they tortured her with, but her body needed sleep, demanded sleep, and she was helpless to stop her brain from shutting down. And the electrodes attached to her temples under the hood would tell them she was slipping into sleep._

_Sure enough, the door opened. Jubilee didn't even have the strength to lift her head to look at the man entering, finding his way into the pitch-black cell by a flashlight. Her brain was desperately trying to shut down before the shocks came._

_She jerked rigid, screaming in the hood, as the electric current arced into her body via the electrodes; one was on each kidney, one on her lower belly, two on her chest, one at the nape of her neck, at the top of her spine, and the two electrodes on her temples. Her aching legs and sore feet left the floor as she thrashed, trying to obtain release from the pain…but there was no escape until they turned off the electricity. Tears streamed from her eyes as she slumped, sobs shaking her body._

_But he didn't leave immediately. Not this time. Instead, her door opened, and three more men came in. Then they shut the door. They were talking to each other, but because of the headphones and the heavy hood, she couldn't hear what they were saying. Then the first man, the ringleader, reached over and turned on the current again. She shrieked at the unfairness of it as they melted into the shadows and turned off the flashlight._

_Several minutes went by. Jubilee could barely see for the tears streaming from her eyes, and she thrashed in her bonds, screaming in agony. And then, unbelievably, she saw a flash of light and felt a rush of displaced air against her skin. And like some twisted angel, Kurt was there, having teleported into her cell to free her._

_Now Jubilee knew why the men had stayed. She tried to fight her pain, tried to scream to Kurt, tried to tell him to go, that it was a trap; she could see the men in the shadows behind Kurt, raising their guns. Her warning was muffled, as were her cries of agony; and he stepped forward, raising his hands to tear the horrible hood from her head._

_She didn't hear the guns' sharp, staccato crack as the men fired; but she saw the look of agony and surprise and horror on Kurt's face as several bright red blossoms of blood erupted on the chest of his uniform. He stared down at his chest for a moment, almost as if in disbelief, and then crumpled almost in slow motion to the floor. Jubilee was helpless to do anything as the light went out of his eyes. She thrashed in her chains, screaming in pain and loss and grief and fury, and felt a terrible weight of guilt settle over her. It was her fault…_

_And then the door to her cell fell in, ripped off its hinges by a set of three adamantium claws, and Jubilee saw, through tear-blurred eyes, her Wolvie. And beside him, she saw Remy framed in the opening._

_The men opened fire. The bullets smashed into Logan, and he reeled backwards for a moment, howling from the pain of the bullets smashing into his body, then he recovered and lunged forward, taking out the guards while Remy ran to free Jubilee._

_Remy tore frantically at the restraints holding Jubilee, who was still writhing in agony at the shocks tearing into her body. Logan's attention was focused on Kurt, lying on the floor, ignoring the blood running from his own already closing bullet wounds. "No," Jubilee heard his grieved whisper as the hood came free of her head. She tried to go to him, to comfort him…but her body refused to cooperate. Her attention was taken up by the pain of returning circulation to her fingers, the electrodes ripping away from her skin, and Remy draping his duster over her cold shoulders. "Wolvie—" she tried to say, reaching out to Logan. He was checking Kurt for any signs of life, but she knew, and Logan knew, there was no hope._

_Logan grabbed Kurt's body and hauled it up over his shoulder, leaving Remy to help a shaking Jubilee to her feet. Together they left the cell. Jubilee's tear-blurred eyes picked up the litter of bodies Logan and Remy had left behind them in the hall, the remains of what looked like it had been a nasty booby trap, and leaned against Remy as they got on the lift that would take them back up to the surface._

_Ororo was waiting for them when they got there. Her eyes widened fractionally as she saw Kurt's limp form over Logan's shoulder, and she took to the air, hovering in the cavernous main room of the base. "Go!" She shouted at Logan, Remy, and Jubilee. "I shall cover your retreat!" Logan took off at a dead run for the open door, Remy half-carrying a stumbling, disoriented Jubilee. They reached the mini-jet quickly, and climbed in. "Come on, darlin'!" Logan turned to holler at Ororo. "Let's get outta here!" Ororo turned and started to fly toward them, and the craft. Just as she reached it, there was a sharp, staccato crack, and she fell out of the sky at Logan's feet. _

_Logan fell to his knees beside Ororo's body, staring helplessly at the spreading red stain on the left side of her chest. "'Ro," he said, cupping her face in his hands. "Hang on, we'll get ya back…you'll be okay…"_

_Ororo shook her head, the slight movement sending a trickle of bright red blood out the corner of her mouth. "No…not going to make it…" she gasped shallowly. Abandoning the effort, she reached up and took Logan's hand. "I…love you…" Logan bent over her, and she used her last bit of strength to haul herself upright and press her lips against his one last time. Then her head fell back limply, and her eyes closed. Her chest rose one last time, fell, and didn't move again._

_"NO!" Logan howled in grief, shaking her. "No, Ro, come on, ya can't leave me, not like this, darlin', please…"_

Jubilation Lee sat bolt upright in her bed, gasping as if she'd just run a mile. Her fists came up to her mouth, trying to suppress her scream of anguish, and the taste of blood filled her mouth as her teeth cut her knuckles.

She remained that way for a long time, sitting in her bed in her penthouse apartment and trying to gulp back the sobs. It had been over a century since Ororo and Kurt had died on the rescue mission to save her, but the nightmares kept plaguing her, and had never gone away.

"Oh, Logan," she said finally, whispering his name to her darkened room. "I didn't mean…I wish it hadn't happened, I wish I could go back and change it all." She drew her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on them until her sobs stopped.

She finally untangled the sheets from her legs and got up. Moonlight silvered her nude body as she crossed under her skylight on her way to her bathroom.

"Lights on, seventy-five percent," she commanded, and the lights came on at three-quarter power. "Water, cold, twenty percent," she said to the silver tap over the white marble basin, and a trickle of water obediently flowed from the tap. She cupped her hands in it, filling them with water, and splashed it on her face, then reached down and repeated the process. "Water, off."

She walked over to the cupboard in the wall and slid the hatch open. Pulling a towel out, she patted her face dry, noticing as she did that the cuts on her knuckles had healed. Studying it with detached interest, she then went back to the sink and deliberately bit down on her knuckles again. The cut healed even faster than before.

"Huh. Guess those nanites really are up to full strength again," she muttered to herself. "Wall: reflection." The wall obediently turned into a mirror.

Turning, she surveyed her back. The area of angry red skin on her shoulder, testimony to a near-miss from a laser blast, was gone. She studied the reflection for a moment. "Looks like I'm going to have to go back and get that side re-done."

'That side' was actually the petal of a huge nightshade flower. The flower was tattooed across her back, from one shoulder blade to the other. The flower's stem started from the base of her spine and went up from there, with leaves curling outward from the stem over her kidneys and ribs. All done in black; she hadn't chosen any color. The side of the flower on her right shoulder was gone, the ink obliterated by the nanites. They had repaired her skin to its former color; the tattoo was gone. "Too bad they can't engineer the nanites to leave my tattoo alone."

She sighed and turned around to face the mirror again. "Not bad for being a hundred and sixteen years old," she said, studying the youthful curves, the belly still as flat as it had been when she was running with the X-Men back in her teens. Her breasts were full, without a hint of sag; and the dark hair was as full and dark as it had been way back in the 'good old days'. "'Bout time, too."

She also felt better. The last mission she'd gone on, as a technology-enhanced mutant assassin 'leased' out to the government by the CyberTech corporation had ended in a firefight that had left her badly damaged. The nanites that Cybertech had imbued her blood with had gone about repairing the damage done to both her biological organs and her cybernetic components…but surface cuts and bruises had been pretty far down on the list when her major bodily organs needed repairs first. She had spent last week in a regen tube back at Cybertech while her nanites went about healing her body. She'd only been permitted to return to her penthouse apartment in an affluent DC neighborhood two days ago, and she'd spent most of the time sleeping.

Her thoughts returned to the nightmare. "Too bad I didn't have the nanites when Ororo and Kurt got killed," she said ruefully to her naked reflection in the mirror. "Could have saved them." Tears welled up in her blue eyes, and she blinked them back. Suddenly disgusted with herself, she snapped, "Wall: normal. Lights: off." The lights went out, the wall went back to being a wall, and she stepped out of the bathroom.

She paused beside one of the huge up-to-the-ceiling windows that dotted her apartment wall. Although a simple vocal command could return the windows to translucence or opacity, she still preferred to use old-fashioned, gauzy white lace curtains. "Lends an air of antiquity to the place," she said to any visitors (mercifully few) who commented on their presence. Truth was, she just liked them. Not all the technological advancements in the last century had been good ones, at least to her point of view. She paused beside one window, looking out over the city.

Her apartment building was along C Street and 14th Street. She could see the White House in the distance; not well, since the shield was in place over the six-story edifice, but she could still see it. Her eyes roved over the rest of the Mall, her mind reflecting on what had been there when she was thirteen and what wasn't there now. The Ellipse was still there; the Washington Monument was still there, albeit cloaked while undergoing restoration. The Department of Agriculture building was still right across from her apartment building; and if she went to the southwest window, she could see the remains of the old Jefferson Memorial site. The Tidal Basin was being expanded so the National Aquarium could use its water for a giant freshwater seapark, and the Memorial had been dismantled.

She sighed as she climbed back into bed and drew the blankets up. It was an affectation only, since the apartment's climate controls kept the apartment perfectly heated; but she liked the feeling, the comfort, in being able to pull the comforter up over her head. For a long moment she stared at the battered cowboy hat sitting on her dresser, tears threatening to erupt again as she thought about the man who had given the original to her over a century ago. This wasn't the original; but it was as close to being the original as she could have her replicator make it, even down to the stains and the tattered brim. And she would light a cigar beside it every once in a while so it even retained the same smell. Cigars and other smokable carcinogenic items were now illegal, of course, replaced by cleaner-burning, non-addictive substitutes; but if you looked hard enough, you could still find the old-fashioned cigars; and when you had as much money as Jubilation Lee now had (CyberTech paid her an almost embarrassing amount of money for being the first volunteer for their bio-nanite enhancement program sixty years ago) she could basically buy anything she wanted.

Except the one thing she wanted most.

She climbed back out of bed, grabbed the hat, and returned to bed, hugging the hat to her chest. She took a deep breath of the cigar smell, her lips curling in a fond smile before the tears started. "Oh, Logan," she whispered. "God…I'm still mad at you, but I miss you so much…still…where are you now?"

She fell asleep still holding the hat, with tears leaving dried tracks on her cheeks.


	2. Logan 2104

Chapter 2: Logan 2104

Logan paused, still in a fighter's crouch, claws still extended, warily keeping one eye on his opponents as he watched for signs that they might get up and come after him again.

No one did. Satisfied after a few moments, he rose to his full height and retracted his claws. "Suckers," he growled, looking at the fallen men. "Think yer fancy guns are gonna take me down? Don' think so. I ain't lived two centuries to fall ta the likes o' you." He sniffed disdainfully as he exited the bar.

There were a few other bikes here besides his, but most of the vehicles in the airpark were aircars, or the smaller personal craft that most people drove around these days. He scorned them. If it had been possible, he would have kept his Harley and ridden it around on the streets below; but machines get old, and parts for his bike had gotten increasingly rarer. And gasoline was scarce, since the powers that now ruled this world had decided that gasoline-powered vehicles polluted the air. So aircars and airbikes began to proliferate; vehicles powered by solar power and equipped with antigrav generators like the ones used on Chuck's wheelchair all those years ago.

He slid a leg over the black airbike. He'd bought the one closest to the shape and make of the old Harley as possible. This one looked like his old bike, but instead of a gas tank, this bike had a solar battery with a couple of energy cells in it for backup.

He turned the ignition key and listened as it started up. Most of them started up without a sound; the running lights would come on (even in the daytime, which Logan thought was a waste) and a discreet beep; but he, missing the old sound, had had a custom shop put on a soundbox that would mimic the throaty roar of a real Harley as it started up.

But no matter what he did to this airbike, it would never equal the speed, handling, maneuverability, and grace of the old machine. He looked ruefully down at the gas-tank-turned-solar-cell-chamber on top of this bike, and sighed. "Ain't never gonna be the same. Think I lived too long," and he guided the airbike out of the airpark and headed out along the freeway.

2104 bore no resemblance to 2004. Only a century had passed, but it had been a century full of new innovations, things that were supposed to make life easier and better for everyone. Some of the inventions weren't all that bad, but some…like airbikes…just made his lip curl with disgust. "Definitely lived too long," he said softly to himself.

Madripoor didn't look like it used to. Instead of being a nice little backwater place where fights and murders were commonplace and were never looked at too carefully, it was now a busy town, filled with silver aircars and a few airbikes. Bars and seedy dives were still in abundance, but the streets were better policed and the dives no longer provided the kind of rough 'amusement' he had come here for back in the days when he was running with Chuck's X-Men.

He supposed, though, that for all its apparent fanciness, Madripoor was still the sticks when compared with, say, New York or Washington. The stuff available back in New York must be incredible, but Logan wanted none of it. Let the younger generation have their fancy gadgets; he wanted to go back to the good old days.

Behind him, he heard the sound of a siren, and then the flashing red and blue lights of a cop started reflecting off the windows of the nearby buildings. Logan suppressed a growl as he pulled over. Some things didn't change. Like cops out to ruin a good night. "What's the problem, officer," he said heavily, staring at the sky and crossing his arms.

If the cop was irritated by Logan's attitude, he didn't show it. "You were speeding," he said absently, scribbling with a stylus on a datapad, and said, "ID?"

Logan growled as he fished around in his back pocket for his wallet. That was one thing that hadn't changed; jeans. People like him still wore jeans, although the upper-crust, artsy-fartsy people wore expensive clothing made of synthetic materials that would last a lot longer than natural fibers like cotton. But denim was still the preferred material for middle and lower class people all over the world.

He dug out the little chip of plastic that passed for ID these days. It was the size and shape of a credit card, though made of a more durable material than plastic, and the little encoded black strip behind the card had a lot more information than the old strips had. Logan didn't know what was on that strip…didn't want to know either.

The officer took the ID card from Logan and slid it into a slot in the side of his datapad. "Patch Logan," that was the name Logan was going by these days, especially in this city, where the name and the face had become legend after over a century and a half of familiarity with the residents and the area. Especially in the last hundred years, after Logan had taken up permanent residence here in Madripoor; the lower class now looked on him as something of a local god. "You have been cited for speeding. The sum of one hundred euros has been deducted from the account number encoded on your card. Here's your receipt." The man pulled a little slip of paper from the front of his datapad and started to hand the card and the receipt to Logan, then paused. "Sir, why is your helmet on the back of your bike instead of on your head?"

Logan rolled his eyes. "Don't wear one," he groused. "Never wear one. Messes up my hair."

The officer slid the card back into the side port. "For failure to wear a helmet, you are being fined another eighty five euros, which is now being deducted from your account." The machine spit the little card out and the officer tore off another little slip of paper, handing it to Logan. "Here's your receipt. Have a nice evening."

Logan snarled as he took the card and the slips of paper back, "What's so nice about it?" He took the card back, palming the loose slips of paper. The cop, however, didn't go anywhere.

"Well? Whatcha waitin' for, a dry rot ta set in?" Logan grumped.

"Your helmet," the cop said, his jaw clenched. "You need to put your helmet on before I leave."

Logan reached onto the back of the airbike, grabbing the black helmet and jamming it down on top of his head. Fastening the straps under his chin, he glowered at the cop. "Satisfied?"

The cop nodded. "Have a nice evening, Mister Logan." He drove off.

As soon as he turned the corner Logan yanked the helmet off his head and dropped it on the back of the bike. "Have a nice flamin' evenin' yerself," he grumped. Running his hand through his hair, he got all the strands back to where they usually sat, and started his bike again.

He reflected on the times as he rode back to his apartment. He'd never had problems with traffic cops and citations for doing (or not doing) something even in New York. And he'd never had problems with Madripoor police. He growled as he looked at the receipts. Ah, hell. He'd have to subtract the cost of the citations from the account this ID card was tied to. He had several ID cards, and each one had a different amount attached to each one.

He shoved them into his pocket and continued on.

His apartment wasn't far from the bar he'd just come from; he would have made it home in ten minutes if he hadn't been stopped by that damn cop. But finally, he did pull into the airpark for his apartment complex, got off and powered down the airbike.

The building was quiet as he walked in and stepped into the lift that would take him up to his floor. "Lift: floor six." It started moving obediently. They worked just like the elevators of the last century, but these started smoothly and stopped without the peculiarsensation of having the floor dropping out under your feet, and the lifts were now equipped with holographic imaging technology that could give you the illusion of standing on a flying platform above a green countryside with nothing but trees around you if you wanted it._'Ro woulda loved this_, he sighed to himself wistfully as he watched himself leave the ground and soar into the air. _She wouldn't'a hadda deal with her claustrophobia_.

The lift stopped, and a door opened up seemingly in midair. "Have a nice morning," the electronic voice said cheerfully, and Logan growled. "It's evenin', ya know. Dumb machine."

"Actually," said a quiet voice from in front of him, "It is morning. Early morning. Very early morning. So the lift is right."

Logan pinned the speaker with a glare. "Still evenin' in my book, 'cause I ain't gone ta bed yet," he growled. "So git on off your soapbox." He frowned in mock annoyance at the tall dark-skinned girl in front of him.

Her name was Carey. She lived in the apartment beside his, and seemed to take a special interest in taking care of him. Or tormenting him, whichever way you wanted to look at it. He growled and snarled at her when she came in to clean up his apartment for him, or when she came to cook or pick up his laundry…but although he would never admit it, he liked her, and permitted her interference in his life, albeit tacitly. Mostly because she reminded him so much of Ororo, lost a century earlier on a mission with the X-Men.

Carey spotted the slips of paper sticking out of his coat pocket, and grabbed at them before he could prevent her. "Another ticket? Patch!" She scanned them quickly. "Not wearing a helmet and speeding. Patch, when will you learn?" she clicked her tongue behind her teeth disapprovingly. "Your account book is in the upper drawer of your nighttable. Worry about that tomorrow; right now you really need to eat and get some sleep." She had escorted him to the door to his apartment, and now opened it and pushed him through.

Logan stopped in the doorway, resisting her. "I locked that door. How'd ya get through it?"

She grinned cheekily at him, her dusky skin getting darker over her cheekbones as she blushed. "Got a new lockpick set," she admitted. "Supposed to work on even the best high-tech locks and retinal scanners. I tried them on your door. Worked like a charm. Now go on and get some sleep, Logan!" she gave him a shove through the door of his apartment, and shut the door behind him.

He turned and stared at the shut door for a moment in irritation, then a smile softened the harsh line of his mouth. "Damn woman," he said softly. "Let's see what she made me for dinner."

It turned out to be a hearty beef stew with a minimum of vegetables and lots of meat. Just the way he liked it. He was touched; she usually tended to make vegetarian dishes. Again, he was forcibly reminded of Ororo as he sat down and ate.

By the time he finished, he was starting to feel sleepy. He wandered into his bedroom. The bed sheets had been replaced with freshly-laundered ones, and the old dirty laundry had been taken away. On his nightstand was a note; _I took the dirty laundry to do with my laundry tomorrow. If you would be so kind as to leave your door unlocked, I will bring the washed clothing back tomorrow evening before you get home. Oh, and a friend of yours stopped by, looking for you; he says he wants to talk to you about a job. He said he was at the Glass and Tap tavern and inn in town, and you could find him there. Carey._

Logan stripped down to his boxers and slipped between the sheets. The bed was warm; she had obviously turned the heating element on in the mattress under him. It was welcome, since it was a cool night. He stretched out in bed, smiling a bit at her thoughtfulness. As he lay there, trying to get to sleep, his mind returned to thoughts of Ororo.

It was almost a century now since she had died, but the memory still hurt. Jubilee had sneaked out of the mansion to go shopping when she was supposed to have been grounded, and got herself captured by an old associate of Bastion's, who had his own anti-X-Men vendetta. Logan and a few of the X-Men had gone to rescue her, and as they broke her out of the old Hulkbuster base, Ororo and Kurt had both died. He and Ororo had picked up on their on-again-off-again relationship just before the incident had happened, and in the renewed welter of emotions that caused, her death coming in the middle of it had made things extremely difficult. And Kurt, his best friend in the X-Men, had died too. It made him snap.

Jubilee had been worked over mentally by the time they had reached her, and seeing her friends die in front of her had sent her into emotional shock. She had, as she usually did, come to him for comfort. He, still in emotional shock himself from Ororo's and Kurt's deaths, had rebuffed her, had accused her of causing their deaths because she refused to accept responsibility for her actions and staying at the mansion when she'd been grounded. He'd flown into a rage, accused her of killing them, and when she tried to deny it was her fault, he'd gotten angry and hurled a computer monitor from the library table at her. It had connected with her shoulder, snapping her collarbone and sending her back to the medlabs. Sure that she would blame him, feeling guilty about hurting her, and with grief still an open wound in his soul, he had left the mansion the next day, packing everything, taking his jeep and putting his Harley on the trailer in the back. By the time Jubilee woke up from Hank's surgery on her shoulder, Logan was gone.

And he'd never gone back. He'd returned once the next year, to leave flowers at the memorial headstone for Ororo and Kurt, and also to apologize to Jubilee for hurting her. But she had been gone, too, to LA to live with her aunt, and had chosen to leave the X-Men. He'd briefly thought about going to seek her out, but a year had passed. He was no longer sure she would want to see him; no longer sure she would welcome him with open arms and the tight choke-hold hug she used to give him. So he stayed away. They had been growing apart for a few years prior to his leaving, and he decided to let sleeping dogs lie and not stir up old feelings. And he wasn't sure he could face the anger she surely felt over his careless injuring of her.

He thought of her not infrequently over the next few years, but somehow he'd never gotten around to going and finding her. He knew where to look for her; he'd kept track of her, looked out for her from a distance even if she didn't know it. He'd almost interfered when she volunteered for the CyberTech cybernetic enhancement program sixty years ago, almost went to her and told her it was a bad idea, but decided she was old enough to make her own decisions and didn't interfere. He hadn't heard about her for a decade after that, and he'd just started getting concerned when she turned up in a special training program sponsored by the government. She had completed the enhancement program, went into training, then went overseas to study from the masters of the martial arts in China and Japan. Upon her return almost twenty five years later, she went through still more government-sponsored training, this time in weaponry and stealth skills. Logan was mystified at this constant training, but it all became clear when she and a few others who had been similarly 'enhanced' by nanotechnology and cybernetics had formed a black ops team. So she was now a government assassin.

Over the last twenty years, he'd kept an eye on her exploits. She was highly skilled and proficient in killing and covert ops. Hell, she was damn good. She was the only survivor of a mission when everything had gone wrong and her teammates were killed; he was proud of her. Black ops wasn't the life he would have chosen for her back when they were watching horror movies and kicking ass with the X-Men, but she seemed happy, and she was certainly good at what she did. And because she seemed content with her life, he'd decided not to open old wounds, bring back old memories, by a sudden reappearance in her life.

He sighed. Sometimes he wished they were still in contact; he missed her laughter, her humor, her personality; missed being able to talk to her and laugh with her. He missed her so badly that it ached sometimes; he hadn't realized until after she left and it was too late just how much he had grown to care about her, how much he'd depended on her for his own happiness. Which was probably why he kept such obsessive track of her whereabouts.

Sighing, he turned over and stared at the picture on his bedside table. One of the few reminders of them that he'd kept after leaving the X-Men, it was of them both standing side by side. Just as Ororo (who had been holding the camera) had clicked the shutter, Jubilee had snatched his hat off his head and plunked it on her own. The camera had captured his look of surprise and her laughing face perfectly. God, he missed her. Resolutely, he turned his mind back to the 'friend' who had come by with a 'job' for him.

The Glass and Tap was a small inn in town that catered to the seedier elements of society. No questions were asked, and anyone looking for a hired assassin could usually find one there. Logan himself owned half the bar; mostly because he still remembered the 'Princess Bar' that Tyger Tiger had run for him way back in the day; and partly because it was the surest place to get wind of a new 'job'. He was an assassin himself now, too. A freelance one, available for hire, not affiliated with any government and with no political or personal entanglements to get in the way. This 'friend' was likely going to hire him for another assassination.

Good. He could use the money to replenish his account now that that damn cop had relieved him of some of his hard-earned cash.

Still thinking, he drifted off into sleep.


	3. CyberTech

Chapter 3: CyberTech

The soft chiming of her comm system woke her from a sound sleep filled with happy dreams of her teen years with the X-Men. "Wha—" she said fuzzily, blinking as she sat up and tried to clear the tangled hair from her eyes. "Lights on," she said, and the lights came on. "Computer, who's the caller?"

"Incoming call from Thomas Donaldson, at CyberTech Corporation headquarters," said the computer's androgynous voice calmly. "Accept?"

Jubilee nodded, then remembered that the computer couldn't see her. "Yes, I accept," she said. "Wall screen on."

The wall facing her bed went from blank white to black screen, and moments later the screen went from black to white. Another second, and the face of a short red-haired man came up, wearing ridiculously antiquated glasses and an old-fashioned button-down shirt. "Hey, Jubes," he said cheerfully. "Late night last night?"

Jubilee shook her head irritably. Tom was the only one who called her that anymore; and she hated it. "Tom, I said don't call me that. Why are you calling so early anyway?"

"Whatcha mean, early? It's not early, I've been up for ages. It's almost nine. You were supposed to be here at eight-thirty for a nanite regen session. Wanna get one more charge up for them, just so we can make sure they all got a full battery. And the Boss Man was sayin' something about a new mission, so you really ought to get here before he does or he's gonna go ballistic like he did the last time."

"Let him go ballistic. What's he gonna do, fire me?" Nevertheless, she started to scramble out of bed. Tom watched calmly from the wall screen as she padded over to the wall and opened one of the drawers there.

"Not fire you, but I think last time he said something like making me give the nanites their next upgrade early, just so you'd have to stay here for a week and he could make sure you didn't have late nights and late mornings."

Jubilee groaned aloud, and stared at Tom in disbelief. "He wouldn't!"

"He would!" Tom grinned. "So you'd better get here soon. Tom out." The screen went blank.

Jubilee sighed as she pulled open another drawer and took out what she called her 'work clothes'. It was a jumpsuit that hugged her upper body, had slightly flared legs, and a wide yoke of fabric across the front and draped low down her back to display her tattoo. It was comfortable, allowed her freedom of movement without sacrificing warmth, and would protect her from any surprise attacks because of the adamantium molecules added to the warp of the fabric. The rest of the jumpsuit was made of a super-strong but lightweight polymer that flowed around her body.

Before leaving, she reached into a hidden drawer, taking out the small black device that gave her an impenetrable personal shield. Nothing would be able to touch her. Not that she really needed it, of course; she was only making the short hop eight blocks to CyberTech's building…but it never hurt to be prepared. She'd learned that from running with Logan all those years ago.

Nothing untoward happened, however; she made the trip in ten minutes in her aircar (traffic was heavier than usual, so it took her a few extra minutes as police tried to unravel a tangle of aircars at 14th street and Constitution Ave. She finally pulled into the airpark for the building at 14th and G Street, parked in her special parking space, and walked into the lobby.

And was attacked.

She got no warning; just a moving blur at the very edge of her peripheral vision. She exploded into motion, dropping to one knee, one hand reaching down to her belt and activating her personal shield, the other flying out before her, sending her plasmoids in a wide, tight arc outwards and focusing their blast outwards from her body. And then she saw who her attacker was, and she froze her sparkles in midair before they could touch the man who had sneaked up on her. "Riley, do you want to die?" she asked, half-laughing, half annoyed.

Riley was the security guard that worked the front lobby, directing visitors to the upper floor and keeping the lower levels a secret from all but those who needed to know. "I don't have a death wish, no," he said, his young, boyish face breaking into a grin. "But come on, Nightshade, we do this every morning I'm here. I know you well enough to know you're going to pull your punches until you know if I'm a bad guy, and you've never seriously hurt me."

"Never?" Jubilee grinned lopsidedly. "What about the first time you did this, and I paffed you into the wall there? You took a medical leave after that, if I remember correctly. That was a serious injury."

"Nah, I went to Atlantic City to gamble," Riley joked. "But no, that first time was a fluke. Now that you know it's me, we haven't had that problem again." He sat down again behind his desk and picked up his newspaper. "Go on down. Your friends have been calling up here every half minute to see if you've gotten here yet."

As if on cue, the vidscreen beeped. "Riley? Has Nightshade gotten there yet?"

Jubilee grinned, pressed a finger to her lips, and headed for the lift. Riley turned to the vidphone. "No, she hasn't. But I heard there was an accident down at 14th and Constitution that snarled up traffic some; she's probably caught in that."

"Oh," said Tom's image. "Well, if that lasts too much longer she'll paff the aircars in the pileup in a fit of pique and blow them to kingdom come. And the boss'll have another fit. Thanks, Riley." The image clicked off.

Riley settled back in his chair and opened his newspaper. Some things never changed…

Jubilee got off the lift when it stopped at Sublevel C and strolled off down the hall. Despite the climate controls in place down here, she could still feel the chill in the air from being underground. Suppressing a shudder, she turned down a small dead-end corridor and stopped in front of a dull gray door labeled, 'Medical Labs'. Slipping her ID card into the slot, she opened her eye very wide and allowed the retinal scanner to scan her eye. Then the door opened with a hiss of hydraulics.

"Morning Carl. Morning, Tom," she said breezily as she strolled in. "Miss me?"

Tom's jaw dropped. "I just got off with Riley…he said he hadn't seen you yet—"

From the other side of the lab, Carl grinned. He was a tall, huskily-built man with green eyes and hair dyed a bright straw yellow. "Don't let that fool you, Tom," he said. "Riley's up there today. He and Jubes are tight. They do stuff like this all the time. Just…Riley's been off while his wife was having her baby, and that dried up old stick who replaced him hasn't got the humor God gave a cabbage." He looked at Jubilee, and smiled at her. "Come on up. Looks like you had a night. Anything I have to help the nanites fix?"

Jubilee grinned as she started unzipping her jumpsuit. Carl and Tom were her 'handlers'. Tom was the techie; he took care of the nanites and the cybernetic organs she carried around in her body, and Carl was the doctor who took care of her biological parts. "Nope. Actually, I did go to bed early; but I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, and it took a while to get back to sleep." Nude now, she lay down on Carl's exam bed.

Nudity, after over a century of living, wasn't a big thing with her anymore. Especially around these two. Both Tom and Carl had seen everything under her clothes, and even under her skin, multiple numbers of times. They were the third set of handlers she'd had since she signed up for Project Nightshade; and so far the only ones who had not had an issue with her body. She did have a nice body; teenage puppy fat had given way to lean, toned limbs and muscles and a woman's curves, the nanites had preserved it, and her past doctors had been almost embarrassed to look at her because they couldn't without drooling. Carl and Tom were under no such restrictions; they accepted what she looked like under her clothes. Probably because they were more 'interested' in each other than in her. Which was fine. It was kind of fun watching the two interact both at home and at work. They were more interesting than some of the other people working here at Cybertech; and much nicer.

Carl probed the skin at the top of her shoulder. "Still looks pink there. Does it hurt at all?"

Jubilee thought for a moment, concentrating on the signals her nanites were sending her, and shook her head. "Nope. Not at all."

Carl made a satisfied sound. "All right. Go on and sit up. Tom wants to charge the nanites, so…" he picked up a tube of conducting gel and waited for her to hold out her hands.

Jubilee smiled as she felt the warm, gooey stuff hit her palm. "I like that. Did you know none of the other doctors ever warmed the conducting gel before they applied it? As if I didn't already have enough to deal with." She rubbed the gel over her hands as he reached over behind her and plugged the thin charging cord into the small metal port at the base of her spine. "Set it a little higher this time. Maybe about forty percent. I have some things I need to get done today."

Carl tilted the top of the bed up as she reached out and firmly gripped the metal handles attached to the side, then braced her feet, but Tom hesitated. "Jubes, are you sure?"

Jubilee rolled her eyes. "Tom, I told you, it doesn't really hurt. Well, maybe in the beginning, but I'm used to it by now. Forty."

Tom winced. "I'm not thinking about how much it hurts you, I'm thinking about how it hurts me," he grumped as he turned to the machine beside the bed. "Masochist."

Jubilee chuckled at his grousing. The chuckle turned into a gasp as the electric started flowing into her body via the plug at the base of her spine and through the contact electrodes embedded in her hands. It had been painful at first; the tiniest shock had hurt, but this was the only way they had found so far to 'charge' the nanites. They did run off Jubilee's own energy reserves, but in case of severe injury, they needed to be 'charged up'. Jubilee knew when she was getting ready for another mission when she was scheduled for more frequent chargeups.

She didn't like them, but she put up with them because she still vividly remembered the last time she had gone out with the other subject volunteers of Project Nightshade and the mission had gone wrong. They had been captured by a gang of Centro-American guerillas and interrogated for information; Jubilee had been the only one still alive when the SEALS came to extract them. Barely. She had sustained massive damage to her cybernetic organs, to the point they were barely functional; since she hadn't been allowed to eat, there were no energy reserves for her nanites to draw on while they repaired the damage, and most of the nanites had 'run down' and stopped completely. The few still remaining had been working as fast as they could just to keep her heart beating and her lungs and brain going. And when Jubilee had been brought back here to CyberTech, she had been hooked up to the charging machine and had punishing amounts of electricity pumped through her body to charge the nanites up so they could heal her body. It had taken a long time for her to recover from that much pain, but the shocks had been necessary to save her life…and the government's investment. Now she never went on a mission without a full charge on the nanites. It also made her post-mission recovery time quicker.

The higher the voltage of the electricity going in meant the faster the nanites would charge. The handles she was now gripping with white-knuckled intensity were feeding information back to Tom's machine, telling him when the nanites had reached maximum charge.

She was concentrating on keeping herself from making any sound that would distress her friends when the door opened. She turned her head just the barest bit, saw that it was the Boss Man, as everyone called the project head Sam Rennick, and turned her attention back to what she was undergoing. Carl quickly whisked out a paper drape and covered her nude body with it. She might not mind Tom and Carl…but Carl knew she didn't like Rennick looking at her. He didn't either; Rennick always looked at Jubilee as though he were undressing her with his eyes.

Tom watched the monitor until the readout showed that the nanites had a full charge, then shut the machine off as fast as possible. Jubilee sank back onto the regen bed with an audible sigh of relief, and panted for breath as she carefully unclenched her gritted teeth. God, she hated these charge-up sessions. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her moth, and she wondered how she was going to say hello to the boss, as he was so obviously expecting. Her fluid levels were low; she knew Carl was looking at that on his computer screen, and cursed herself for not taking the time to drink a glass of water when she got up, to replace what she'd lost during the night crying.

Carl touched her elbow, and she looked down, to see him holding a cup of water with a straw in it. Thanking him with her eyes, she took the straw in her lips and sipped deeply. Rennick looked exasperated. "Aren't you going to say hello?" he demanded sharply.

She was about to say something cutting when Carl broke in. "Give Nightshade a minute, boss," he said in a cordial tone that belied just how angry Rennick had made him. "The charging process takes a lot out of her." He sounded pleasant…but Jubilee could see the stiffness in his shoulders, and Tom's, and she knew they were both upset with Rennick. Anxious to avoid a confrontation, if only for her friends' sake, she responded as soon as she was able, though not without her own measure of sarcasm, "Good morning, boss." Rennick hated the word 'boss'; it was one of the reasons why Jubilee and Tom and Carl used it.

Rennick gave a curt nod. "Got another mission for you," he said.

Jubilee sat up, still holding the thin paper drape to her chest. As soon as Rennick went to the large blank wall at one side of the lab, Carl helped her to stand, held the drape up like a changing curtain, and she yanked on her clothes over shaking limbs. Then she sat back down on the bed as Carl brought over a container of fruit juice and one of his favorite chocolate cupcakes. She accepted it gratefully and started to eat while Rennick went over the mission plan.

He'd called up a map of the southern Atlantic Ocean and indicated a small island nation off the southeastern US seacoast. It used to be Cuba; Jubilee couldn't remember what it was currently being called, though she knew there had been some unrest in the Intelligence community about recent activity there. "We've been hearing a little too much about this island country," Rennick was saying. "And with the recent foiled attack on the United European States, they've become rather more than a nuisance and are starting to become dangerous. The Europeans have asked us for help. They sent in one of their assassination teams to neutralize the threat this nation poses by assassinating the dictator…and the team never made it. They were killed.

"The Europeans asked the President and the President agreed to send a team of our best in. Unfortunately, since you're no longer part of a team, it will have to be you." He pointed at Jubilee. "By yourself. And I don't think I need to tell you that plausible deniability applies here. If you're captured this time, like your team was three years ago, there will be no SEALS this time to haul you out. You're on your own. Got it?"

Jubilee resisted the impulse to curl her lip and snarl at the man. "Got it," she said shortly. "When's the briefing, and when will I leave? What will my armament look like?"

Rennick dug around in his expensive Italian leather briefcase and handed her a little silver datacard. "Everything you need to know is on here. Look it over carefully, as soon as possible. You leave the day after tomorrow." He snapped the briefcase shut, turned on his heel, and walked out.

The sound of the door slamming was loud in the suddenly quiet lab. For a long moment no one looked at each other, each worrying about what the upcoming mission might bring.

"Hardass," Tom finally said into the silence. "Damn hardass. He went to all that trouble to get you to say 'hi', and he never said 'hi' back. I'm going to put laxatives in his coffee."

That broke the tension. Jubilee laughed a little, pushing her worry back to the back of her mind for the moment. "Put one in there for me too, will you?"

"And me," Carl said, going to the small lab fridge and getting out a brown paper bag. Coming back, he shoved it at Jubilee. "Here. Chicken salad, apple, another of those cupcakes, and some more juice. You need it."

Jubilee tried to give it back. "Carl, I can't. It's your lunch. I'm going to go grab a bite after we're done here."

"Eat it," Carl said firmly, his tone not allowing for any further discussion. "Your fluid and energy levels are low. Didn't you eat any of the roast chicken I gave you?" Carl's hobby was cooking, and he was good at it too. Jubilee was often favored with the results of his experiments, since he complained she never ate enough and didn't have a husband or 'significant other' to care for her.

Jubilee flushed. She was too embarrassed to tell him she'd been unable to eat because the chicken smelled and tasted like something that Scott used to cook for dinner back when she lived with the X-Men. The very thought brought tears to her eyes. "I—"

Carl held up a hand. "Don't. I don't need an explanation." He looked up as Tom brought over his own datapad and handed it to Jubilee. She slipped her datacard into it, and started reading the screen as she ate. Both Tom and Carl hovered over her shoulder, reading the mission information with her.

"I don't like it," Carl said flatly when they were done.

Jubilee smiled. "Carl, you never like any of the missions," she said gently.

"It's too dangerous. You're going alone. Too many things could go wrong."

"Yeah. Like when you led the Nightshade team three years ago." Tom was serious. "Look, Jubilation. We know you're in a dangerous business. We knew that when we took over as your 'handlers'—God, I hate that term, makes you sound like a damn zoo animal, for Christ's sake—but knowing you accepted the risks when you accepted the nanotech enhancement doesn't make it any easier to bear when you go off on a mission you could potentially never come back from. And even worse when all we can do is twiddle our thumbs and wait for you to come back. Since that disaster three years ago, we've had to struggle with our memories of what you looked like when you got back here…and we know you could come back looking like that again. And it scares the hell out of both of us. You're not just a job, Jubilee. You're our friend. And we don't like seeing our friends get hurt."

A lump rose in Jubilee's throat. "I'll be careful, Tom, Carl," she whispered, leaning forward and giving them both a hug. "I promise I'll come back. I can't disappoint the only two friends I have left in the world, can I, now?"

Carl hugged her back, tears in his eyes as he looked over her shoulder at Tom. "No you can't," he sighed unhappily. "No, you can't."


	4. New Target

Chapter 4: New Target

"Wolvie?"

Logan didn't turn around from the library table where he sat. "Go away, Jubilee."

She didn't go away. Instead he heard her soft footsteps enter. The door closed, then those steps crossed the library until she stood behind him. "Look, Wolvie, I know she meant a lot to you…"

"You don't know the half o' it, Jubilee." Logan looked at the little plant in front of him, gently reached out and stroked one broad green leaf. Ororo had loved plants. He'd taken over their care, as sort of a way of getting closer to her even now, after her ashes had been scattered on the winds she so loved, in the homeland she had left to follow Xavier's Dream. But they seemed to miss her, too; they hadn't seemed to be doing so well lately, and the rose garden outside was definitely suffering without Ororo's gentle care and loving touch. Such a gentle woman, fierce, strong, independent…he missed her. More than he wanted to admit to anybody.

Even Jubilee. Maybe especially Jubilee. "Go away, Jubilee. I don't wanna talk ta ya right now. Go see Emma if ya need ta talk."

"But I want to talk to you." Jubilee's voice was soft. "Please, Wolvie…"

"Don't call me that! I ain't 'yer Wolvie'!" He sprang to his feet, clenching his fists. "S'always about you, ain't it? You didn't want to get grounded. You wanted ta go shoppin'. You didn't wanna obey the rules. And 'cause o' your stupidity, you got captured an' 'Ro got killed rescuin' yer ass!"

"Logan, please, I feel guilty enough already…but it wasn't my fault really, I didn't kill her, they did, they shot her—"

With a roar, Logan seized the heavy, boxy computer monitor on the table and flung it. "It was your fault! If you hadn't gone and gotten yourself kidnapped, none o' this woulda happened!"

He broke off as the sound of her sobs filled the room. He spun…and saw that the heavy monitor had connected with Jubilee's shoulder and knocked her off her feet. She lay in a heap on the floor, one hand gripping the shoulder that had been hit. And her sobs were sobs of pain, of fear and anguish and heartsick grief, and she was still wearing all black. Had been wearing nothing but black in the week since the memorial service held in 'Ro's home village. He stared at her for a long moment, looking at the tears on her face, feeling guilt for hurting her crash over him like a wave. He felt horribly guilty for accusing her of something that wasn't her fault, but he had never been good at apologies. He froze for long moments, then took a step forward and held out his hand. "Jubilee—"

She flinched away from his hand. It was more an instinctive reaction, and an understandable one given the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of the old O:ZT operatives who had kidnapped her…but Logan had never seen her flinch away from him like that. And he realized that with his angry words and hurled computer, he had probably destroyed her trust. She'd always been able to come to him before for comfort, and he'd always welcomed her with open arms. He'd never hurt her physically. Until now.

The door to the library opened, and Paige and Emma hurried in. "Jubes!" Paige exclaimed, and rushed to her friend. Jubilee turned toward Paige, away from Logan. Emma helped Jubilee stand, her own face twisting as she tried to block out the waves of pain radiating from Jubilee. "We'd better take her to Hank. I think that's dislocated." Paige nodded, and they left the library without a backward glance at Logan.

He was left staring after them, guilt, shame, remorse, anguish, and grief creating a confused welter of emotions in him. Of the three women in the mansion he cared about most, two were now gone; Jean and Ororo. And now, with one careless move he'd destroyed the bond between himself and Jubilee. He couldn't bear to stay around, to see her withdraw from him, to see the fear in her eyes the next time she saw him, fear that he might hurt her again.

So he'd retreated to his room and started packing…

Logan snapped awake. Though he was wrapped in his bedcovers, curled into a fetal position as if to block out the pain of the memories he carried, his whole body felt cold. The sun was shining through his window, sending bars of light falling across the picture of the laughing black-haired girl on his nightstand, and again he felt grief and remorse for the friendship he'd unwittingly destroyed. "I'm sorry, Jubes," he whispered, reaching out to touch the small face. "I hope wherever ya are, yer happy." He almost wished he could stay in bed and just look at that picture the rest of the day, lose himself in the memories of his lost friend…but he had places to go, and someone had been looking for him. And if he knew Carey, she would be coming in at any moment…

"Hello!" came a cheery voice from the doorway, and he smelled Carey's unmistakable perfume. "Are you awake yet?" He heard her footsteps coming down the short hallway to his room, and seconds late she strolled in casually. "Morning," she said cheerfully, putting down the empty laundry basket she carried.

"Mornin' ta you too," he grumped.

She laughed and strolled across the room, pulling the curtains back. "Good morning to you too, grumpy," she said. She grabbed a corner of the bedcovers, pulled it open, ignoring Logan's disgruntled 'get outta here' and slid into the bed behind him.

Her body was warm against his back, and he found himself relaxing as her arms crept around his body. "Yer gonna be late fer work," he admonished as she began to kiss him, nibbling down his neck and across the broad expanse of his shoulders. Despite his words, though, he turned in her arms and began to kiss her back.

"And you are going to be late meeting your 'friend'," she said silkily, her head falling back on her neck as she felt his hungry lips kiss down the line of her throat. "But I don't think we really care…"

He silenced her with a kiss on her lips.

The Glass And Tap was dimly lit, and the morning crew went about their cleaning up after the previous night's drunks. Some of those drunks were still asleep at their places at the bar and in assorted booths around the room, and several of the barmaids were going around and waking the patrons up with a cup of black coffee, on the house. They weren't quite open for breakfast yet, and one barmaid, a freckle-faced girl with reddish-blonde hair tried to stop him as he walked in. "Sir, we aren't open yet…"

"Don't bother, Madeline," said the barkeep, a tough, crusty, older woman named Kathy who Logan had hired himself. "He owns the place. He comes and goes as he pleases."

The girl looked at Logan, eyes wide. "You…oh, sorry, sir," and she quickly ducked around him, heading for the nearest table to start wiping it while keeping a surreptitious eye on Logan.

He strolled up to the bar. "'Madeline'?"

Kathy never stopped wiping the glass she was holding. "One of the new girls. She likes working here, and the customers like her. Lots of eye candy. Though just between you and me, there's not much between the ears." She looked at him. "Why? Friend of yours?" She blinked. "Or the daughter or granddaughter or great-something-daughter of a friend of yours?"

Logan turned and looked back. Maybe one of Nate's offspring? Or Rachel's? "What's her last name?"

"West. Madeline West."

He shook his head. "Naw. Just looked like someone I knew once, is all."

Kathy grinned as she put the glass back into the cabinet and picked up another one. "When anyone's lived as long as you have, everyone tends to start looking like an old acquaintance." She looked at him shrewdly. "But you didn't come here looking for a bedwarmer, or discuss my staffing choices."

"No. I heard someone was stayin' here who was lookin' fer me."

Kathy nodded, her jovial demeanor dropping as she slipped into the coded words that assassins used. To anyone else, it would sound like gibberish. To Logan, it meant something different indeed.

"He's been here before. He's still here. He refused a room, and he took a table back there." She nodded to a far corner of the restaurant/bar. "He's still there. Fell asleep sometime late last night. I told the girls to leave him alone and not wake him with the other patrons. He's the rough kind, and I think the last time he was here you didn't like him at all. You refused his 'business offer'."

Logan gritted his teeth. Spinning away from the bar, he walked toward that section, which was one usually reserved for the clandestine business that took up his spare time.

The man was dressed in a dusty black jacket and jeans that had once been black but were now a faded, washed-out gray. He was slumped over the table, snoring slightly, his tangled mop of mousy brown hair waving gently in the breeze coming from the AC vent over his head. Logan sniffed. Yes, he'd recognize this particular man anywhere. His hygiene wasn't that good.

Logan reached down, grabbed a fistful of jacket, and hauled the sleepy man upright. "Up, bub," he snarled. The man blinked, trying to wake up, and Logan wrinkled his nose at the fetid smell of the man's breath. Grabbing the jacket a little lower, he pulled the guy upright, out of the seat, and stood him upright on his feet. As he did, a small yellow envelope fell form the man's hand. Logan reached for it.

Despite all the newfangled gadgets that had been invented the last century or so, those involved in 'under-the-table' activities still preferred the feel of solid, hard cash. Although there were still many different countries, currency had basically been reduced to only a few kinds; the US dollar, the Euro, Russian Conglomerate kopeks, Middle Eastern rupees, and Japanese yen. All forms of currency were spendable in other countries, and the exchange rates for all of them had been standardized. A definite improvement over the 'good old days'—at least in this one instance.

This envelope, though—Logan looked in it, and was surprised at its contents. A wad of bills, all of them higher denominations from every one of the five currency groups…and something else. He reached into the envelope, pulled out a picture. It was of a smiling, blond-haired woman holding a little child; a mother and daughter, he guessed from the similarity of expression. The second picture…well, the pose was the same. That was about all he could say about the picture. The mother, the blonde from the first picture, was lying on a garbage-strewn floor, obviously dead. The child, the little girl—about four, he guessed—was lying in her mother's arms, also dead. Horribly, bloodily dead. And the expression on both faces wasn't a happy one.

He stared at the photos for a long minute, then pinned the unkempt man with a steely, icy gaze. "What the hell is this?"

The man swallowed. "It's my daughter and my granddaughter," he croaked hoarsely. Logan suddenly saw the dark circles under the other man's eyes, saw the slump in the guy' shoulders, and felt a sudden surge of pity. He didn't allow any of that to show on his face as he continued to stare. 'They lived on the island of San Juarez, what used to be called Cuba." Logan waved a hand for the man to continue irritably. He didn't need a geography lesson.

"'Lived'?" he prodded.

The man nodded miserably. "'Lived.' Two weeks ago their town was overrun by soldiers from Dictator Estillo's palace. They were a poor town, they didn't have the money to pay the tax he demanded from them…so they killed everyone." He swallowed hard. "My son was visiting another town on business. He returned to find everyone dead." He looked at Logan. "Everyone. My granddaughter had just turned four. They killed her too. And my daughter…my daughter had to watch. And then she was killed too. I came to ask you—" he paused for a moment, then rushed on, as if afraid he'd lose his nerve, "I came to ask you for a favor. I want to offer you a contract on the dictator's life. I drained two bank accounts to fill that envelope…but if it isn't enough I'll get more. I promise. Just…" he looked like he was struggling visibly. "She was all I had. My little girl. I tried so hard to protect her, raise her…and this happened. Please…I'm begging you…you're the best freelance out there. I'll pay you whatever you want."

"Sit down," Logan growled, giving the man a shove back into the seat. Not as hard as he normally did, though. Then he sat himself, in the seat across from him.

He didn't normally get involved in politics. And this man was trouble. Once, ten years ago, Logan had accepted a contract from him. The target had been a murderer, or so he'd claimed; the target had killed a lot of people in the last war with the Middle East countries. Logan had accepted the contract and gone out to perform the deed…and found he couldn't. Whatever the man was guilty of, he was now a father several times over. He'd turned over a new leaf, helping out with different charities, devoting the rest of his time to raising his children and caring for his wife…and Logan had returned, given the man back his money in a temper, and told him he didn't want to see him again. "I killed a lot o' people in the two centuries I been alive, and many o' them was fer money, but I'll be damned if I go an' kill an innocent. I never done it before, I ain't gonna start now."

But this wasn't an innocent. Killing a child while the parent watched…Logan remembered with sudden clarity the sickening pit that had opened up under his heart when he and Bobby Drake had pulled Jubilee's limp, lifeless form off the cross she had been so cruelly nailed to. He remembered his panic giving way to a dull despair as the minutes passed, Warren got weaker, and still Jubilee didn't move, didn't wake up. And the wild flutter in his stomach when she had finally spoken, her whispered words followed by a joke because she had seen the worry and fear in his eyes and she wanted to ease his tension. He hadn't lost her then; he'd driven the wedge between them by himself. But he hadn't lost her. She might not care or know where he was; but he knew where she was. And even though he could only watch her from a distance, she still felt very close to him. If this were her…would he do the same? Would he want to kill the man who had done this to her? He remembered his barely contained desire to rip Bastion apart when he'd first seen her out there in the desert; the memories were still as clear in his mind as if they'd happened yesterday.

"I'll do it," he said, more to himself than the man.

His visitor perked up. "You…what? You'll do it?"

Logan looked at the man, at the two photos he held, and at the money. Opening the envelope, he took out the wad of US dollars and counted off a few thousand, and handed it back. "Give them a decent burial with this. For me." He slipped the envelope into his pocket, then took the photos of the mutilated bodies and handed the happy picture back to the man. "Keep this. This is how you want to remember them. Not like this." He waved the photo of the bodies in the air. "Now go, 'fore I change my mind."

The man stood, relief filling his face. "You'll do it? Thank you, I'll pay you more if you want…"

Logan shook his head. "Keep yer money. I heard stories 'bout Estillo. Bout time someone did somethin' bout him. Since the governments ain't, we gotta do it." He stood up. "Beat it. You'll know when he dies; it'll be all over the news."

Logan walked back to the bar. "Kathy. Got a light?"

She started searching behind the bar for something to create a flame with. "Oh, here," she said finally, coming up with an old-fashioned, antique lighter. "Dunno if it works. What do you need it for?"

Logan dropped the picture in an ashtray. An affectation only, since cigars and cigarettes were now illegal, but they made the place seem a little more like the good old days.

Kathy looked at the picture, and her face hardened. "That come from that man?"

Logan nodded.

"You took the contract?"

He nodded again.

Kathy was silent for a moment, then dropped the picture in the ashtray and watched as Logan set fire to one corner of the photo. Both of them watched the coated paper curl and shrivel in the heat, and finally flake away to nothing., Logan handed her the lighter back and started to head for the door.

"Logan?" Kathy called to his retreating back.

"Yeah," he said gruffly.

"Give 'em hell for me." Logan remembered that Kathy had younger sister expecting her first child. A daughter.

"I will." He resumed walking.


	5. The Dictator's Ball

Chapter 5: The Dictator's Ball

"Personal shield?"

Jubilee looked inside the neatly packed suitcase. "Check."

Tom checked that off the item list. "Hand blaster? I know, I know, but it's standard issue, whether you're a biological blaster or not."

Jubilee sighed. "Yes, check."

Tom: "Stealth clothing?"

Jubilee: "Check."

Tom: "Bombs?"

Jubilee grinned. "Won't need them." She opened the suitcase up wider and started tossing items out of the case. Tom gawked at her.

"Are you nuts? How are you going to kill him if you don't have all that stuff?"

Jubilee lifted her hand and let a brief play of rainbow sparkles dance over her fingertips and knuckles before reabsorbing her paffs. "This way." She continued tossing items out of the suitcase.

Tom rescued the blaster before it hit the ground. "Damn it, Jubes, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Jubilee folded her arms and leaned against the table. "I saw the plans of the compound's layout. It's going to be really difficult getting in by stealth; he's got defenses and motion sensors and all sorts of stuff. I don't want to expend that kind of effort on such a slimeball when there's an easier way."

"'An easier way' how?" Tom narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

Jubilee shrugged. "Walk in the front door. Think about the principle of Occam's Razor, Tom; never look for a complicated solution when there's a simpler one handy. Or as an old friend of mine said; 'Sometimes simpler is easier, darlin'." She mimicked Logan's gruff voice perfectly.

"And how do you propose to just 'walk in the front door?'" Tom asked.

Jubilee turned to her suitcase and opened it. "Estillo's annual birthday celebration is in a week. I'm going to get myself invited to the party." She shook out a long, figure-hugging sequined blue gown with off-the-shoulder straps and a plunging neckline sure to attract the dictator's attention. "What do you think?"

Carl looked at it critically. "Can't move fast in that skirt if you have to."

Jubilee grinned. "I had it altered. You can't see it, but there are invisible seams sewn into the front of the skirt and panels cut along the knee. If I have to, I can rip off about two thirds of the skirt for additional mobility in a crisis."

Carl raised an eyebrow. "Well, I can't say much for the dress, but the plan seems sound. So what are you actually going to take, and do? You know Rennick's going to blow his top when he hears about your deviation from his 'Plan'."

Jubilee grinned. "Ah, yes, 'The Plan' that he spent two hours working out the details of. Thing is, Rennick has never been out there in the field. He has no idea what it's like, what I have to do to get in the way he wants me to get in. I've been doing this longer than he's been alive—" (Carl snickered; Rennick was only 35) "--So I know better than he does what the best way in and out is. He's not going to tell me how to do my job until he's as old as I am. And with the way he is, someone may kill him before he even gets half as old." She grinned at him. "So here's my plan; I get myself into that party he throws. That intelligence contact will be able to get me an invitation, and when I go in, I'll make sure I catch Estillo's eye. He's a sucker for pretty women; he'll snap me up in a moment. And when I'm alone with him, I'll do him in, and be out with a minimum of fuss and bother."

Carl frowned. "Hold it. Back up. Did I hear you say something about 'being alone with him'?"

Jubilee nodded.

Carl swore fervently and started pacing. "Jubilee, we know you. We know about your past, your history. And I did some checking, and Estillo is…well, he doesn't have a very good track record for leaving his women intact when he's done with them. Quite a few have ended up dead. He's a sadist, Jubilee, pure and simple. And you've gone through more than your fair share of sadistic torture."

Jubilee smiled gently at him. "Carl, I know. I thought about all of that. But my pain will be a small price to pay for getting a monster like him off the face of the Earth. I saw the pictures of the people he ordered killed. One woman and her daughter…the woman had to watch as her four-year-old was beaten and killed. Can you imagine what that's like? I can't. I've never had any children, and I don't intend to, not with my life the way it is; but I can sympathize with that woman. And she knew she was going to be next. Carl, whatever price I have to pay will be worth it."

"And what if it's your own life?"

Jubilee shook her head. "Not likely. The nanites will probably take care of that for me. All I need is my personal shield, the dress, and maybe some stealth clothing so I can get away. I think that's it."

"But how are you going to kill him? I mean, it's his birthday celebration. There will be dignitaries and visiting foreigners all over the place. He's going to have armored clothing, and possibly a personal shield keyed to both physical and energy contact."

"When we're alone I'll manage to get close to him. Somehow. And I'll send a paff into his mouth and explode it once it reaches his stomach." She smiled viciously. "I did some checking too; his preferred method of execution is a stab wound to the gut. A fatal stab wound. So an exploding gut will be a fitting mode for his execution, and one that everyone will recognize as my signature. And if he's trying to get under my skirt he'll have the shield off so he can…do whatever…and the opportunity will be perfect."

"What if your hands are secured?"

Jubilee smiled maliciously. "My hands will have to be free if he wants me to participate in some of the games he likes to play with girls," she said, and made a rude hand gesture that spoke eloquently of the kind of 'play' Estillo liked.

Carl sighed. "I can see you're determined to do this," he said finally, wearily. "But I'm going on record as being against the plan. In fact, I'm against this whole mission."

Jubilee pinned both Tom and Carl with a piercing blue gaze. "This guy needs to die," she said slowly. "So far the freelancers who have tried to take him out haven't succeeded. They've all died. It's time for us government toadies to take a try." She sighed. "You with me?"

Carl and Tom both nodded. Reluctantly, but they nodded.

"Come on, I have a plane to catch." She kissed them both, a chaste peck on the cheek, and picked up the suitcase.

Two days later an envelope appeared at the front desk of a posh hotel for a Ms. Li. Inside that envelope was an elegant piece of heavyweight paper embossed with the state seal and an invitation to Regent Estillo's annual birthday celebration.

The limo opened and disgorged a beautiful, impeccably dressed Chinese woman in a floor-length blue sequined gown that plunged low down her magnificently tattooed back. The watching crowd oohed, and flashbulbs started clicking. At the far edge of the crowd, some of the poorer people of the small island nation gathered, looking enviously at the rich who had enough money to be invited by the Regent to the annual birthday bash. Jubilee saw one little girl, hollow-eyed and bony, standing at the edge of the crowd, and her heart twisted at the hungry look on the child's face. Controlling her anger at Estillo's greedy reign, she reached into her tiny purse, took out a wallet, and beckoned the child forward.

The press and the crowds parted and the little girl came forward, tightly clutching the hand of a little boy, probably her brother. They were both ragged and dirty, and Jubilee suddenly felt pity. They hadn't had a bath in ages…and she had one whenever she felt like it. She reached out to the little girl, and sucked in a breath when the child backed timidly away from her hand. So not all those smudges were dirt. "I won't hurt you, sweetheart," she said quietly. "Here." She extended the money.

The girl took it disbelievingly. "For us? Miss?" she asked in badly-accented English. "The Regent doesn't allow charity given to the poor. The soldiers beat us."

Jubilee slipped into Spanish. "Yes, it's for you. I am not one of his subjects; I do as I please. How many are in your family?"

"Six," the little girl said. "Abuelo, Papa, Mama, me, Pablo, and we have a new baby at home."

Jubilee reached into her wallet and gave the little girl another large bill. "It's not much, but things will get better soon. I promise."

A gruff guard approached. "No charity! Give the lady back her money!" He raised a baton toward the little girl, who quickly held the money back up as if to avoid a beating. Jubilee quickly folded the small fingers over the money and spoke to the guard in Chinese-accented English. "I am visiting from China. I do not know law here say not to give money to poor. We do all time in Hong Kong. And I am the Regent's guest. Surely it is permitted this time, just once? He would not want to offend me." And standing in such a way as to obscure anyone else's view, she slipped a bill into the guard's hand.

The guard looked at the bill in his hand, then stepped back. "No, we don't want to offend the Regent's esteemed guest. Go on!" he waved the baton at the two urchins. "Go." They waited no longer, but scampered back into the crowd, probably wanting to make their escape with the precious money before they were compelled to give it back. Jubilee watched them go with an ache in her heart. If she had known, she would have brought more money with her. There were a lot of hungry, dirty, ragged hollow-eyed children standing at the fringes of the crowd. She could have fed them all with half the contents of even one of her bank accounts. Things were truly bad here.

"What's the problem?" said a voice, and Jubilee turned. A well-dressed, grossly fat man stood beside the guard she had just bribed, and she winced at the sight of the corpulent belly. This was Estillo. And all that belly fat was going to make his death that much more gruesome.

Good.

The guard was speaking in Spanish, which he believed she didn't understand. He hadn't been close enough to hear her speak to the children. "This woman says she is a guest of yours. She gave some money to a couple of beggars." So much for bribing him to silence. Jubilee had to fight the impulse to curl her lip. A man whose loyalty could be bought was not a man who could be trusted, even to the one buying that loyalty.

Estillo bowed as best he could over his bulging belly. "Madam, the beggars beg because they can get money from such well-meaning and beautiful women such as yourself instead of working for it. That is why we have a law that says no charity can be given to the poor."

Jubilee bowed back and continued to speak in her Chinese-accented English. "In China poor sometimes have no choice but beg. Cannot get work. I thought maybe you make allowance just once?" She smiled beatifically. "After all, since you live in such splendor, surely you not begrudge poor child some small gift?"

Estillo's smile grew fixed, and Jubilee could almost see his mind already planning her incipient demise. As she had intended. She knew the law; she had defied it, and hidden behind a façade of a well meaning but ignorant foreigner, counting on her obviously Asian features to fool Estillo into thinking she was a visiting foreign dignitary. But since she had brought no escort, she wasn't one who was very highly placed, and Estillo would come to the conclusion that she wouldn't be missed, not in a city as rife with crime as this. No doubt he was planning on killing her and then spreading the lie that she was beset on her way back to her hotel by the local _banditos. _Which was just fine by her; as soon as she was alone with him…

He couldn't make a scene here, not in front of all the reporters. He could, of course, suppress the presses in this country, but Jubilee knew there was press from all over the world here. Estillo couldn't suppress all of them. And if word got out, he might lose some face with the countries supporting his bloody reign. "Quite right," he said through gritted teeth. "I will consider a repeal of the law. Now, if you will accompany me…?" He held out his hand, bowing again. "A woman as beautiful as yourself should not be alone. A party like mine would be best enjoyed in the company of another. Perhaps, as I have no feminine escort—" (his wife had died under mysterious circumstances only a few days before, Jubilee remembered) "—you might care to be my partner for the evening." It was a demand delicately couched in the terms of a request.

Oh yeah. She was now on his hit list. He would keep her by his side all evening to prevent her from speaking to anyone else about this little fiasco; and then he would quietly spirit her away to his inner chambers…she would be looking forward to killing him all evening. Already his corpulence disgusted her; his oily hair, his overly smooth speech, his attitude…killing him would be very satisfying.

She took his hand, bowing over it. "Certainly. Thank you for offering." She turned and swept into the door of the palace and into the grand ballroom on his arm. As they went in, she heard him whisper to the guard, "See me tomorrow about finding the child and getting that money back. I want it. And report to my rooms on my signal; I want this girl eliminated." The guard gave a brief nod, and Estillo led Jubilee into the ballroom. "What was that?' She asked politely. He flashed her a smile that had no true feeling in it.

"I was telling the guard to remind me that the law needed to be repealed."

Good; so he didn't know she could understand him. That would come in useful if he spoke to his sycophants that evening in her presence. She could understand what he said; he might inadvertently reveal something if he thought she was ignorant of his Spanish.

Guests continued to arrive, but Jubilee was largely unaware of them. Her attention was forcibly captured by the fat dictator. Every time her attention started wandering, he would bring her back abruptly with a question. He never allowed her to leave his side, even to the point when the musicians started playing an antiquated waltz and she expressed an interest in dancing. He insisted on accompanying her and made a terrible mess of dancing, stepping all over her feet (the dress was long enough that it covered the heelless shoes she wore; easier for escaping if matters should go south suddenly) and tripping on her dress. He trod heavily on one hem, and she heard the sound of a tearing stitch. She froze until he stepped off the fabric, and sighed in relief. If he had torn the panel off her dress, she would have had a hell of a time explaining why her dress came apart that way.

He declaimed loudly that he had been trained by the best dancing masters in the world, and to prove it he offered to dance another round with her. And so she had to endure his attentions again, feeling as though her face was now permanently frozen in a smile that held no joy in it, and she wondered if she would have any toes left after the dance. It was with some relief that the dance ended, and to her relief he pronounced himself thirsty and offered to bring her a drink. She graciously accepted, and he sidled (well, as best as a 300+ pound, 5 foot 5 man could sidle) off through the crowd to the drinks table, and she found herself standing alone.

Relieved to find herself free of his odious presence, she leaned back against the wall for a moment, relishing the simple luxury of having some time alone to herself for the first time that evening. Parties like this could be fun sometimes, especially if she was with someone she liked. She remembered the last party she had gone to; with Tom and Carl in tow. They had been compelled to attend some government function or other that proved to be immensely entertaining because her two friends had her laughing herself into stitches with their impressions of Rennick trying to kiss the butts of the higher ups. There was no fun to be had here.

Wondering where Estillo was with her drink, she turned to see where he was…and bumped into a couple dancing on the floor. She mumbled an apology and started to turn away when the man she had bumped into turned and looked at her, and her heart stopped.

It was Logan.


	6. Meeting

Chapter 6: Meeting

She froze.

For one long, harrowing minute all she could do was stand there and stare at the man who had been her best friend, mentor, and partner so long ago. Time seemed to stop for both of them; movement stopped around them, and her field of vision narrowed down to the man in front of her. He stared at her, similarly frozen.

Her first reaction was _Oh, God, poor Wolvie_…because his healing factor plainly wasn't working as efficiently as it had the last time she'd seen him, almost a century ago. His hair had a few strands of silver, his face had a few more lines, and he just looked so tired and…old. She wasn't used to seeing him old. In her mind's eye, he was still the gruff, invincible protector who had comforted her and guided her through her teen years. And she had to restrain the impulse to fling her arms around him and hug him, because seeing him after so many years made her want to cry. A lump formed in her throat, and she took a step forward, his name forming on her lips but left unsaid.

And then her next reaction kicked in. Anger. _He_ had left _her_, all those years ago, after injuring her in a fit of grief. Why was he intruding now, here, when she had gotten her life back together, gotten herself used to being alone? She shouldn't feel sorry for him; he'd chosen whatever path led to this meeting, here, now, and as she'd learned in the century between them, a century of distance both physically and emotionally, she shouldn't pity him. He should apologize to her.

Logan swallowed hard. He hadn't been expecting to see her here, now. His reaction was shock. _Oh, God, poor Jubes_…she had gotten the nanites at just that point in time when she was in her prime; her body seemed frozen in the middle of womanhood. She might be 116, but she physically looked no more than twenty-five. But she wasn't the happy, carefree teenager he remembered from before that terrible, disastrous incident; she looked worn and tired. The soul that looked out of her eyes was an old soul, a soul who had seen too many cares, troubles, and terrible things to ever forget them. And at that moment, he wanted to fold her in his arms, hug her tightly, and never let her go again. She was his girl, his precious Jubes. Life wasn't fair to her.

Then the expression on her face changed, went from recognition, pity, and sorrow to anger, loss, betrayal, and even though she didn't say a word, he almost flinched at her unspoken accusation. A familiar feeling flooded his heart; guilt. The same guilt he'd been feeling since he left, since he'd turned his back on her because in his anger he'd blamed her for the death of the woman he'd loved. The unspoken blame hung in the air between them, a wedge driven into their hearts, keeping them apart for a century now and perhaps longer…then her face changed, crumpled in sorrow and remorse and (even more shockingly) guilt, and she started to turn, to fade backward into the crowd and leave him alone.

The guilt and remorse in her eyes drove him forward that one last step, the step he'd avoided taking for a century, and he touched one bare arm. "Jubilee…"

She turned and flung herself at him, burying her face in the lapel of the dinner jacket he'd had to wear in order to get in here. "Wolvie, please, I know you're mad, I'm sorry, I never said it before, but I mean it, I am sorry…" She inhaled a sharp breath, almost but not quite crying into his jacket, and Logan swallowed hard.

"Jubilee—" the name still fell smoothly from his lips even after a century of never having spoken it. "Come on, let's go somewhere quiet an' outta the way so I can talk ta ya."

She nodded. He shot a quick glance at Carey, who had insisted on escorting him here and 'backing' him up (what did he need backup for?) and the tall African woman nodded quietly to him and melted into the crowd. He had to admire her sense of discretion, though he had to wonder about what she was feeling, seeing her 'date' suddenly dumping her for another girl. All that vanished as he turned to Jubilee and took her arm. "Come on, Jubes." There was an electric tingling in his fingers as he guided her, hand on her elbow, to one of the large gilded French doors leading out to a lovely flower garden.

They walked out, away from the other people, and Logan stopped when they got to an iron bench under a tree. "Jubilee…" he looked at her, saw the silvery tears on her face, streaming from her blue eyes, and cut his words off in the middle. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in a tight hug like the ones he had given her so long ago. And she raised her arms, hugged him back, and the wall between them started to crumble to dust. "Wolvie…"

"Jubes…"

She looked at him fully, placing a long, slim finger against his lips. "Ssshhh. I need to get something off my chest. I'm sorry, Logan. You were right, and I was wrong. I was so selfishly bent on pursuing my own pleasure I didn't think about the consequences. When I sneaked off to the mall that day I was being selfish again…and because I did, Ororo and Kurt died." There was a tremor in her voice. "And you were right when you accused me of causing their deaths. If I hadn't been so self-centered, they would have lived, and you wouldn't have left—"

Logan placed a finger on her lips, silencing her. "Hush a moment, will ya?" he said gruffly, his own voice none too steady. "Always runnin' yer mouth off. Let me get a word in. Yeah, ya were selfish…but ya weren't ta blame fer 'Ro an' Kurt dyin', an' I shoulda never told ya you was. We all knew we could die when we signed up fer Chuck's superhero gig. Kurt an' Ro decided ta go rescue ya. Nothin' ya coulda done woulda saved either one o' them, an' you were dealin' with yer own problems then. An' it wasn't fair o' me ta accuse ya, an' I was way outta line when I threw the damn computer at ya an' hurt ya. Ya know what made me leave, Jubilee? It was watchin' ya cringe when I reached out to ya, seein' the fear in yer eyes. It hurt me ta see you pull away, because I'd told you I'd always be there fer ya, an' I'd never hurt ya. I broke that promise, an' I couldn't face ya with the knowledge o' that broken promise between us. So I did what I always did; I ran. An' by the time I got up the courage ta come back an' face ya with the knowledge of what I did, you had left the X-Men, and was gone. An' I was maybe a little afraid o' facin' yer anger, an' maybe a little relieved ta find out that I didn't have ta face ya, and I left again an' I never went back. Jubes…darlin'…" he floundered, having run out of words. Finally he said quietly, "Fergive me?"

Jubilee swallowed hard. "Yes, of course. Wolvie, I forgave you a long time ago, I just didn't know it until now. I never could be mad at you, you know." She hugged him as tightly as she could, and Logan rested his chin on her shoulder, sighing gently. It felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off his shoulders now, and he felt suddenly younger.

They stood that way for a time, Logan smelling the salt tang of tears falling silently from her eyes, then Jubilee pulled away and dabbed delicately at her eyes with one knuckle. "Mustn't ruin my makeup…"

"What, their fancy little nanites can't fix it for you?" She stared at him, startled, and he grinned wolfishly, the old grin that had been so familiar in days long past. "Yeah, I know 'bout them nanites. Jubes…I was afraid you'd be mad at me…but I was afraid ta let go. You were all I had left, and while I had driven you away with my carelessness, I needed ta still have ya near me, in some way. I kept a picture o' you; I kept tabs on where ya went, an' what happened ta you, I kept little news clippings and stuff o' you." She still cared about him. She forgave him. That last loose end in his life had been tied up neatly.

Jubilee laughed, a free, happy carefree laugh that made Logan's eyes sting with unshed tears. "I tried to keep track of you. I've hard your address, and the address of the bar in Madripoor, for ages and ages. And every now and then I check to make sure it's still there and the address and numbers were current. I just didn't have the guts to come and see you." She looked at him, her eyes soft. "I guess you missed me as much as I missed you."

"Yeah, I did." Logan smiled as he admitted it. "So hey. You here to kill Estillo too?"

Jubilee stared at him in shock, then remembered what he'd said; he knew what she'd been up too. And suddenly she looked nervous. Surely he wouldn't approve… "Yes."

Logan sighed. "Jubes, you're a grown woman—hell, if you didn't have those nanites you'd be pushin' up daisies by now—so I can't tell you what you can or can't do. But I don't like the thought of my little girl killin' someone else, especially for the damn government. The same damn government who gave Bastion the go-ahead ta torture an' brutalize an' hurt ya. But while I'm not real enthusiastic about what ya come here ta do, I came here to do the same thing…an' if ya let me, Jubes, I'll kill him fer ya so you don't have to."

Jubilee sighed. "Logan, I'm not all that thrilled about killing either. But this is what my bosses say I have to do, so I'll do it. I do have the latitude to 'reject' certain 'assignments', and sometimes I do when I don't feel the target they want me to kill deserves it. But in this case, I have to say I agree with the government; Estillo doesn't deserve to live. And I'm going to take particular pleasure in executing him. So let me do my job, okay?" She gave him a quick kiss. "I'd better go before Estillo looks for me and doesn't find me in there. If you know so much about me, Logan, you know where my apartment is in DC. Look me up there in a couple of weeks." She planted a quick kiss on his cheek and headed for the doors, leaving Logan feeling dazed. He sat down on the bench under the tree, unconsciously caressing the cheek Jubilee had kissed, and stared into space for a moment.

Carey suddenly materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, and sat beside him. "That's the little girl you have a picture of on your nighttable?" she asked. "She doesn't look all that much older than the picture."

Logan grinned. "She's a hundred and sixteen years old," he said, leaning back against the bench. "Looks good, don't she?" Now that the shock had worn off, he could appreciate her grown-up beauty. He could just see her, approaching Estillo and taking the champagne flute he handed her.

"Mmm." Carey gave a noncommittal grunt. "Healing factor like yours?"

"Naw, nanotechnology. Makes her look like she's got a healing factor, though, doesn't she?"

Carey didn't respond to that. "What's she doing here?" she asked instead, peering after Jubilee as the other girl disappeared into the crowd.

Logan sighed. "Same thing I'm doing here. Trying to kill that bastard. Looks like she's closer to doing it than I am. I may just let her." A bitter note crept into his voice. "After all, she got this far without me, she'll continue doing just fine without me."

Carey stared at him. "Situations change," she said slowly. "No one is an island. And besides, you were supposed to kill the dictator yourself, for your contact. If you don't kill him, you'll have to give the money back." She smiled slowly. "And what better way to bond with your former protégé than collaborating to kill someone?"

Logan stared at Carey. "How did you know…She's my…who are you?"

Carey opened her mouth to respond when there was a sudden commotion in the ballroom. "Everybody stand back!" Logan's sensitive hearing picked up the sound of Estillo's voice among the ripples of murmurs. "Give her some room…it must have been the wine…she said she's not used to it…guards, take her up to my room…"

Logan lunged toward the open French doors. Jubilee!

He had to push and shove quite a few people before he got to the center of the room, only just in time to see the Dictator's personal assistant clap his hands self-importantly in the center of the room. "Please, please, it was just a little incident. Be assured, our esteemed Presidente Estillo will care for the poor girl who just collapsed. Please, enjoy yourselves, and he will be back down momentarily."

Logan took a deep sniff. Mixed in among the heavy scents of cologne, perfume, aftershave, and body sweat from the guests, he could just barely pick out Jubilee's body scent from the air. And that scent was saturated with the smell of anticipation. She was making her move, then. He turned to Carey, who had followed him. "I'm going to check on her. We probably won't be rejoining the dance. Just go back to the hotel."

Carey was fumbling in her tiny purse for something even as he spoke. Taking her hand out of her purse, she pressed herself close to him, hugging him tightly, unexpectedly, her hands sliding under his dinner jacket and pressing against his back through the thin dress shirt and heavier stealth clothing he wore under his monkey suit. "Be careful," she said tightly, quickly, and then turned away, disappearing a moment later in the crowd. Logan stared at her, wondering what the hell that was all about, then forgot all about her as the faint sound of a scream reached his ears. _Jubilee!_ He ran up the stairs two at a time. He was in so much of a hurry that he never felt the tiny hard lump of a thin metal disc on his back under the jacket.

Carey watched him go, then hurried to the ladies room unnoticed by anyone. Inside the stall, she quickly shucked the fancy gown she wore, cursing Logan's pigheadedness. "Didn't even want me to come…couldn't figure out why I did…Damn the man! And damn you, Nate, for suckering me into this! I could be at the Mansion right now sleeping!" She gave her head an annoyed shake and shimmied out of the full-skirted gown. Underneath it, she wore a form-fitting black skin-tight uniform with green inserts—

…and a red circle, quartered by a black X, on the breast of her uniform.

Jubilee had walked up to Estillo, who was plainly annoyed at her absence, and took the glass of champagne from him, taking a sip. "Thank you," she said in her Chinese accent. "I was hot, and went out for air."

Estillo's smile got, if that was possible, wider. "That's quite all right. I was simply wondering where you'd gone." He took her arm, leading her off to one side of the ballroom as he spoke. Jubilee, to cover the awkwardness and hoping that he hadn't seen her with Logan, took another sip of her champagne.

Her face suddenly flushed pink, then paled. She could feel the blood draining from her face, and then suddenly her legs refused to obey her commands and she found herself sinking to the floor. A neurotoxin! He had slipped something in her drink to paralyze her and send her into a faint. Probably was supposed to last a long time, she reflected, but her nanites were negating the toxin quickly. However, if she pretended it had taken effect…she let herself slump bonelessly to the floor.

She felt herself being lifted in a pair of strong arms, and carried away. Guards, she supposed. Estillo must have given them the signal he'd told them to watch for. Good. They thought the neurotoxin was working, then. She concentrated on getting the nanites to keep the toxin in her stomach, not letting it slip into her system. As soon as she could, she'd have to eliminate the contents of her stomach to get rid of the toxin. Good thing she hadn't eaten much this evening. She kept herself limp as they carried her up the imposing marble staircase she'd seen from the ballroom floor.

The guards put her down on a soft surface—a bed, she figured—with a none-too-gentle thump, and she heard Estillo say, "That's good. The drugs will keep her immobile while I do what I want to do. I don't know what those nanites the Middle Eastern Conglomerate told me about can do, but obviously she's out and won't pose much of a threat. I'll call you when I'm ready to have her packaged for delivery to them."

Jubilee would have gasped in surprise if she'd been able. The Middle Eastern Conglomerate! They had been the country closest to the United American States to making effective use of advanced nanotechnology. It looked like Estillo had set this up, knowing she would be sent here to kill him. And he had turned into the predator, with her as the prey, and she was now going to be packaged for delivery to another country to be used as a lab rat! She had to fight her indignation, keeping still as the guards started top leave the room. As soon as they were gone…

Estillo smiled at her. "I know you can hear me. The neurotoxin paralyzes the body but leaves the other senses intact. I guess you're wondering what's going on," he said. "I expect you thought you'd come here, assassinate me for your precious government, and succeed. What you didn't take into consideration is that I knew you. I knew you were the assassin as soon as I saw you. I was watching for you, you know The Conglomerate wants you alive, so they can study how your government put you together. So they contacted me. I will give them you, and they will give me weapons of sufficient quality and quantity so as to allow me to take complete control of San Juarez." The door was closing behind the last guard…almost ready now…

He smiled as he trailed a hand down Jubilee's arm. "Such a beautiful girl. I hadn't expected you to be so pretty. I didn't expect my appetites to be fanned into lustful flames by the simple sight of you. But I have a simple remedy for that. They want you, but they won't care if you arrive with a few more bruises. So." He leaned over her, and placed hands at her dress's neckline.

Jubilee lunged for the fat man, silently and quickly. As one hand came up around his throat, her other hand ripped away the panels of her dress, leaving the shredded remains on the floor as she buried her fingers in his neck. He barely had enough time to get out a short scream before she had crushed shut his windpipe. She threw her head back and screamed, mostly to cover the sound of his choked-off cry, hoping that would make the guards think Estillo was assaulting her. They might hesitate to step in if they thought he might get upset with them for interrupting his 'fun'. She froze that way for a long moment, listening for the sound of the guards returning. And then there was the distinct sound of a body hitting the door, and seconds later the door flew open.

Logan stood there on the threshold.


	7. Assassination and Escape

Chapter 7: Assassination and Escape

It felt like déjà vu.

How often had he gone running at the sound of Jubilee's scream? Not often in recent years, but often enough in the past that this felt familiar.

Until he opened the door and found a very different scene than the one he had expected to find. "Jubilee?" he asked, staring at the man she was strangling, and at her, not a hair out of place, and her dress quite a bit shorter than it had been when he'd last seen it.

Jubilee rolled her eyes. "Damn it, Logan, I said I'd handle the assassination! What did you have to come up here for?"

"I heard you scream, so I came to find you."

"I'm not a helpless little girl, Logan. I came prepared for this." She reached under her skirt, came up with a hand blaster strapped to her upper thigh. She pointed it at Estillo as she took her hand away from his throat. "One sound, and I swear I'll blow your head off," she warned him. She turned her head aside as her shoulders started to heave.

"My compound has a shield around it that prevents anything but the most basic technology from working," Estillo snapped at them both. "My guards' weapons work, but any other weapon will not, and that includes the weapons you're carrying, you half-human monsters!"

"Watch yer mouth!" Logan roared, stepping forward and extending his middle claw, delicately nicking the fat man's rolling throat flesh folds. "Don't call us monsters! Look at what yer doin' ta yer own people. Yer the monster here, not us."

Estillo was shaking now, terrified, his eyes almost bulging out of his head as he stared at the razor-sharp metal blades threatening to take his head off. He was so pale he looked as though he could possibly faint at any moment. Logan snorted as he shoved the fat man into a chair beside a window, took the cord to one of the heavy red velvet curtains, and sliced a length of it off the window. Wrapping it around the thick throat and tying it off tightly behind the man, he went to Jubilee. "Are ya all right?"

Jubilee's shoulders were heaving.. "The nanites are working," she said, sounding for a moment so much like the Jubilee of old that Logan had to bite his lip. "They're pushing the toxin out. It's going to go into my stomach…" she spat out a pithy phrase as her stomach rebelled. Logan lunged for her, turning her over on her front as she vomited the contents of her stomach (and the neurotoxin) into the heavy velveteen coverlet on the bed.

She wiped her mouth on the corner of the covers, and turned toward Logan with a wry smile. And then before he could react, she brought her hand up and paffed him.

Or not him. He spun, and saw that she hadn't tried to hit him; she had aimed for, and hit, the dictator. The man had somehow untied the cord and was sneaking up behind Logan, intending to wrap the cord around Logan's neck. Stupid, but the man didn't know that.

Jubilee flew past Logan, slamming into Estillo. He reeled backwards. She collided with him again until he was pressed against the wall and her hand was buried in the bulldog-thick neck. "Stupid," she hissed at him, her eyes glowing blue. "Stupid stupid stupid. He's my friend. Did you think I wouldn't defend him like he defends me?" She leaned in close, and her hand tightened. "He's right about you being a monster. And I was sent here to kill a monster. Let's do it." She smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant one. "I know the room is soundproofed. In fact, if it hadn't been for Logan's enhanced hearing, he wouldn't even have heard me. So neither will your guards. They won't hear you scream." Her lips twisted in a cruel smile. "They won't hear your guts explode either. So I can execute you in peace. Now. Open up." She tapped his lower lip with her hand.

Estillo shook his head and clamped his lips closed. It was a futile gesture; she would do what she had set out to do. She was sure of that. But it was fun to watch him squirm.

"Open up now," she cooed, her fingers caressing his lip in a grotesque parody of a lover's caress. "Nice and wide…"

There was a sudden movement outside the door, and Logan cursed aloud. The guard he had knocked out must have woken up. Racing to the door, he barred it, then dragged a heavy long couch before the door. "Finish him off, Jubes," he said warningly. "We gotta find a way out of this rat hole."

A thud at the door convinced Jubilee. She turned to Estillo, her mock playfulness gone. "Open up," she said ruthlessly. Estillo looked at her, looked at the door, bulging on its hinges, then opened his mouth and shouted "Help!" Even soundproofed, that call would get through the door, albeit faintly.

Jubilee swore, a vicious curse that made Logan's eyes pop at those words coming out of her mouth, and jammed her fingers into his mouth. Estillo began to scream, a sound that was abruptly choked off by the sudden introduction into his maw of a spark of glittering energy. Jubilee forced it down, concentrating on stuffing it down into his stomach, and then stepped back. "Stand back, Wolvie," she said, staring levelly at the dictator. "He's going to weigh a lot less in a couple of moments."

And Estillo's gut exploded.

Logan flinched and covered his eyes, glad he'd retreated to the other side of the bed in his haste to block the door. Blood, undigested food, stomach bile, chunks of the man's ample belly flesh, and the contents of his intestines splattered the room. Before the gore stopped flying, the room was almost coated in a fine mist of blood.

Logan stared at the mess, then at Jubilee, for a long moment. The killer in him approved coolly of the act; the brutality of it matched the brutality of the dictator's own actions. But the coldness of the act, and the fact that it had come from a girl he still thought of as a sloppy, eternally bubbly teen on a sugar high, gave him pause.

Jubilee saw the change on his face, and sighed. The image of the Wolvie in her mind's eye was different from the Logan standing before her. She supposed if her mental picture was so wrong, his mental picture of her must be similarly wrong as well.

The shouting in Spanish from the other side of the door escalated, and another shudder from the door itself snapped her back into action. She quickly stripped off her bloody blue gown, momentarily regretting that she would have to leave it behind. She'd liked the dress.

Under the gown she had worn her skin-tight stealth suit and nothing else. The suit had been specially modified to work with the cut of her gown, via retractable fabric panels on the sleeves and back, and she hadn't worn the belt and padding that usually came with the suit. She'd thought something like this might happen and she would need to get away quickly; added weight would slow her down. Her nanites could repair almost any damage she suffered, short of dismemberment, so she wasn't really worried.

But now she had another responsibility. Logan. She had to get both of them out of there, and Logan, with his adamantium, would weigh more than she had expected she would have to handle. She grimly unfastened the leg straps that held her mini-blaster close to her thigh and in easy reach of her hand, palmed the blaster, then aimed high and shot out the skylight overhead. She dropped the gun and ran to Logan, wrapped her arms around his middle, and said cryptically, "Hang on."

Logan was about to ask her why he was supposed to hang on when suddenly they were airborne. He started at his feet in shock.

Jubilee had blasted off from the hard marble floor. Her paffs had been aimed toward the floor, the direction of the blasts focused below her.. The heat from the energy release scorched the floor, but they were moving up! In much the same way Sam used to fly, back in the day, by blasting with the lower half of his body, Jubilee was doing the same. She expended enough energy to get herself airborne and they flew through the skylight. "Jubilee!" he shouted to her as they soared out of the room and out into the crisp, cold air above the palace. And they were still climbing.

"Hold still!' Jubilee's voice sounded strained. "It's a lot of weight, Logan, and I can barely handle it! Hang on!" He wrapped his arms around her. Not that he was scared, exactly; but he was a long way off the ground, and he had never been airborne like this before. He'd never had a problem with Rogue, or 'Ro, or Warren…but Jubilee's mode of transportation left a lot to be desired.

They were over the stables now; the dictator maintained a stable of expensive horses for his collection of old carriages. Up ahead, Logan could see the wall of the palace, and beyond that, the city…

BAM! They slammed into something hard. Jubilee screamed in shock, surprise, and pain, and for a brief few minutes they lost altitude as she tried to recover. "They have a shield around the entire palace complex!" she shouted to him. "I can't get through!"

Carey sped along the corridors, cursing. None of the guards had spotted her yet; they were too busy worrying about the escaping Jubilee and Logan, and keeping the guests at the party from panicking and leaving. She, however, had something else to do.

According to the scans of the opulent palace, the control room that coordinated all the palace defenses should be right around the corner from where she was. Carey paused just once, a brief moment to consult the global positioning satellite receiver in her hand, then sped around the corner. Sure enough, the door was there, guarded by two men. She raced up to them, at the same time reaching out with her telepathy, and drove a psychic knife into their brains, knocking them out instantly. Then she turned the handle and slipped into the room.

She didn't have much time. The guards would be coming down here to find a way to keep Logan and Jubilee from escaping. She studied the controls in front of her, cursing as she tried to decipher the Spanish labels on the buttons. Finally she found one labeled 'shield', hit that button on the giant touch-screen controls, and watched in satisfaction as the SHIELD STATUS button went from green, which meant on, to red, which meant the shield was off. Smiling in satisfaction, she left the room at a dead run, just minutes before the guards entered it.

Jubilee was shaking with the strain. The energy she was putting into testing different areas of the shield was draining her, and she was getting frantic. She had to get herself an Logan out of there…how? She was on the edge of collapse, and they had lost altitude. She couldn't keep this up…but she couldn't let them capture her and Logan either. They were down there right now, shooting at her and Logan, still clinging to her. She could feel the burning pain of the lasers, quickly gone as her nanites took care of the injury.

She gathered herself, made a wide turn (small turns were impossible because of the sheer amount of energy she was using to keep both her and Logan airborne) and headed straight for the shield, marked by the wall around the dictator's compound. And just before she reached it, she saw a faint shimmer in the air, and the shield was down.

She screamed in sheer exhilaration, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten as she soared up into the air, leaving the shouting guards and the swarming compound behind. She didn't know where she was going, didn't care; she just wanted to get them out of there. She could hear Logan speaking to her, telling her something about pursuit. She looked behind her, and moaned. They were being pursued. She sped up, using the last of her strength to climb, and they disappeared into a low-hanging cloudbank. The thick fog obscured her sight and muffled her vision, but she forced herself to keep going blind through the clouds.

She tried to go as long as she could, but Logan was a dead weight at her back (they had shifted to a piggy-back position, he piggybacking on her) and she was exhausted. They lost altitude steadily, no matter how desperately Jubilee tried to keep herself aloft.

Logan could feel her straining, tiring. As they broke out of the cloud cover, he took a quick glance behind them. Their pursuers were nowhere to be seen, and before them was a slightly rocky shoreline. It looked deserted, and there was a stand of palm trees only a few feet back from the waterline. It would be an ideal place for them to land, and hide. And they needed to get out of the air; Jubilee's skin was ice-cold.

He'd been shocked as hell when they'd taken off. He had never realized Jubilee's power could be used to fly, and as they disappeared into the clouds he realized that a long distance flight would drain her too much. And he also realized that landing was going to be a problem. So, now that they were over the water, he silently mentally apologized to her and quickly shifted his weight on her back. She gave a weak cry of surprise as the abrupt weight shift threw her off balance, as Logan meant it to. Her plasmoids stopped, and they began a long dive down to the ocean below.

He wrapped his arms around her and aimed for the water feet-first. They broke the water's surface still going fairly fast, and Logan started kicking frantically. At least, this close to the tropics, the water was warm. But he hated water, hated swimming; his adamantium made it so difficult to swim he usually didn't even try it.

This was different. This was Jubilee's life.

The impact of the water and the sudden submersion had taken her by surprise and shaken her out of her exhausted daze. She struggled, thrashing, and Logan briefly lost hold of her as he tried to accustom himself to the water. Finally getting his bearings, he looked around for her. It was still night, and the darkness in the middle of the sea was unnerving. Not that he was worried about himself, but Jubilee would be a prime target in her current exhausted state…

Her head broke surface a few feet away from him, and he started to stroke toward her. She was dazed, and struck out at him weakly, thinking he was a predator; but he calmed her quickly. "Jubes, it's me. Hang on. Yer exhausted. Let me take ya inta shore." She stopped struggling, surrendering to him, trusting him. He wrapped one arm around her waist, then started kicking for shore.

They reached the tiny strip of rocky beach, finally. He dragged her up on it, panting and out of breath himself. She was unconscious, breathing shallowly and evenly. Logan dropped to his knees beside her, leaning over and checking her breathing. She was just sleeping.

Picking her up, he walked into the treeline and found some dense, low-growing green shrubbery to hide her in. Returning to the beach with a palm frond, he swept it over their footprints up to the waterline, trusting the incoming tide to wipe out the last few traces of their landfall. Returning to the dense brush, he sat down against the tree with a sigh and looked at the sleeping girl.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected when they finally met again…if they ever met again…but this wasn't it. He'd been obsessed with memories of the girl he'd known; despite what he'd learned of her life and her life choices since he'd last seen her, he still hadn't expected her to be so…different. She had a dark side now, a side that didn't mind killing. The light in her eyes when she had throttled Estillo and forced him to swallow her paff; the coldly calculated way she'd regarded the dying dictator writhing on the floor with his blood splattered all over her gown only emphasized the difference in her attitude. He wasn't sure he liked it. "Ah, Jubilee. Still tryin' ta make my heart stop, ain't ya? Even after a hundred years." He grinned suddenly, and stripped off his dinner jacket to drape over her shoulders in an attempt to warm her.

A small metal disk caught in the coat's lining caught his eye. And when he picked it up, he realized it was a tracking device. The tiny winking green light confirmed his guess, and just as he was wondering how it had gotten there he remembered Carey's quick caress, her hand slipping stealthily under his jacket. "Why, that little…" he grinned suddenly, widely, and settled down into the sand and the bush to wait. They weren't lost. Carey would come and get them.


	8. The Island

Chapter 8: The Island

Jubilee went from deep sleep to instant wakefulness. And sighed when she realized where she was.

And who she was with.

Logan lay beside her, sleeping with his head pillowed on a heap of palm fronds, snoring. She grinned widely, recognizing the sound even after so many years apart. She'd heard it often enough during her teen years to become intimately acquainted with the sound. Reaching down she gently stroked a lock of hair back off his forehead and back into place. Even after a hundred years he still wore the same hairstyle, and that one bit of hair still wouldn't stay in place!

His breathing hitched, and she drew back quickly, afraid she'd woken him. But after a moment his breathing returned to the shallow, deep breaths of sleep, and she hauled herself tiredly to her feet, inspecting her body critically.

The nanites were working at slightly slower than normal speed; this worried her. Normally wounds healed, if not almost instantaneously, then at least overnight. But one of the dictators' personal guards had fired at her the night before when they made their escape, and it had left a deep burn along the bottom curve of her ribs. She had almost screamed with the pain, managing just barely to stifle it to a gasp. Because if Logan heard…

She paused again, looking down at him. "All these years, and I'm still pulling your Canadian bacon out of the fire," she said affectionately, smiling down at him. "Ah, well. Let's see if we can 'rustle up some grub', as you used to put it when we went camping, huh?" She took a look around. The blue ocean lay before her eyes, with a few small islands just at the horizon. She shook her head. She must have gone farther than she thought she had.

The beach was rocky, rather than sandy. She paused just long enough to kick off the shoes she'd worn and mentally commanded the suit to flow down over her lower legs and bare feet. After a moment's hesitation it did, slowly, sluggishly. She ran her hand over her lower back, felt the charging/linkage port in her lower back, and cursed. The water had gotten into it; chances were good that some silt or debris from the ocean had gotten into it too. She was going to have to take the suit off and have Logan check it for obstructions.

When she got back.

She set off along the beach, examining the trees and surrounding flora for anything edible. She found a few coconuts, which she shook and tapped for edibility, and then spied a bush full of berries. She'd never seen them before, but then, she'd never been stuck on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, either. She stepped up to the bush and picked one, examining its firm reddish-yellow skin critically, then carefully bit into it. Its juice flooded over her tongue, sweet and flavorful, a moment before the sourness of the fruit closed her throat and caused her to start spitting and hacking.

She hacked, spit, stamped, and when she finally could speak again, swore colorfully in a handful of different languages. The juice was good, but the fruit was sour! Worse than a lemon. And she'd never liked lemons. Eyeing the bush distastefully, she gave it a wide berth and continued on. She was eyeing something in a tree she was fairly certain were unripe bananas and wondering what they would taste like green when a snort stopped her in her tracks.

Framed by a screen of green bushes ahead, she saw a small spring. Water. And apparently fresh, because there was a small wild pig standing beside it. It was snorting in a clearly hostile manner, and looking at her as if it might charge at her any second.

She didn't mind killing humans; but an animal, a dumb animal, was something else. She almost hesitated…and then the analytical part of her mind took over. After her tremendous exertion the night before, she was weak. She needed to eat, and so did Logan. This pig, as much as she might not want to kill something that hadn't hurt her, was a source of food. So. She took a step back, gathering the last of her energy reserves.

As she expected, that was its signal to attack. It rushed at her, and she took one step back, raised her hands to paff it…

And a dark shape came bursting out of the treeline, roaring as it caught the pig in midair on six-inch claws. By the time Logan halted his rush, the pig was a limp carcass, bloodily dead. He let the animal slide off his claws and grinned at her. "Got us breakfast."

"Hey!" Jubilee exclaimed. "_I_ found it! _You_ just killed it! I was going to bring it back to the campsite for our breakfast!"

Logan grinned. "Whatever ya say." He bent down over the carcass, wiping his claws on the bristly pig hair and retracting all but one. He slid the point of that claw in the thick skin under that chin and slit it from the chin all the way back. He slid a hand into the body cavity and yanked a handful of guts out, dropping them carelessly on the ground. "Wrap those up in some leaves. If Carey don' find us t'day, we can use 'em ta fish t'night."

Jubilee eyed the steaming, bloody, malodorous pile of offal distastefully. Logan paused, grinning in his skinning of the pig. "Hey. You can blow a man's stomach open but you can't handle a pig's innards?"

"This is different," Jubilee said, eyeing the dead pig with a look of distaste. "If I weren't so exhausted, if I didn't need to eat now to get my energy levels back up, I would have let it go." Logan huffed in laughter and deftly sliced off a section of hide, dumping the remains in it before wrapping a piece of vine around it to make a neat, if smelly, package. "Here, I got it."

Jubilee sighed and sat down. Logan finished with the carcass, and frowned at her. "Aren't we going back to the campsite?"

"Fresh water," Jubilee pointed at the small spring the pig had been drinking from, and Logan blinked. He hadn't even smelled the clean water over the heavy metallic tang of blood in the air and the overwhelming scent of salt water.

"Good thinkin'. Yeah, we'll make camp here." He looked at her. "Don't suppose you could blast a hole in the ground an' gimme a light fer the fire?"

Jubilee grinned as she aimed her paffs at the loose gravel at their feet. In a matter of a few seconds she had made an impromptu roasting pit, and Logan tossed in some driftwood and leaf detritus for her to set fire to. But she hesitated. "Logan, if the dictator's people are still looking for us, they'll see the fire—"

He shook his head, cutting off her words. "I was watchin' where we was going. We're at least three or four islands over. I'd actually be pretty surprised if we aren't in the Florida Keys."

"Back on home soil?" Jubilee grinned. "Great. So all we have to do is find out which direction we have to go and get to the mainland." She looked down at her side. "I need to get home and have Tom look at my nanites. They're not healing me as fast as they should be."

Logan sucked in a breath as he saw the large scorched hole in the side of her uniform. "Jubes. That must…"

"Hurt like hell?" she nodded. It did. "But I'm used to it. Speaking of which…" she started to unseal the edges of her suit and peel it off.

Logan returned his attention to the pig, spitting it and lowering it over the pit, trying not to look at Jubilee as she stripped down to her skin. He was busy turning the pig when he heard Jubilee's "Logan?"

"Yeah?" he said, not turning around.

Her silvery laugh stopped him. "It's okay, Logan. We're old friends. And I've gotten used to nudity." She came up to him. "I need you to check the linkage port at the base of my spine and see if anything's clogging the hole."

Logan started at her back. Her skin was smooth, unscarred; but at the base of her spine was a small black square with a hole in the middle of it. He squatted to look inside it, uncomfortably aware of the smooth honey-colored skin swelling out just inches from his chin, and looked in. "Seems clear," he said as quickly as he could, and turned away.

Jubilee sighed and started to put her suit back on; Logan couldn't help but watch this time. First a pair of skin-tight leggings, made of what looked like black spandex but that Logan was pretty sure was something else; and then an exercise-bra-like top. At the bottom back of the shirt was a patch of flexible stuff, and a long, thin probe. Jubilee positioned the probe right over the hole at the base of her spine and pressed it in. Logan heard it give a quiet but definite click as it locked into place. "What's that?" he asked when she was decent again.

"It feeds directly into my spine," Jubilee explained, picking up one of the coconuts and beginning to examine it for cracks. "I can control my suit with mental commands—look—" the fabric panels of the suit started extending themselves as she spoke, covering all of her exposed skin in minutes. "The stuff you see is actually an adamantium-vibranium alloy over a layer of Teflon-like stuff. Makes it harder for projectiles to damage me seriously. The stuff coming out is basic Teflon fabric. Not as invulnerable, but cheaper to use to cover whole areas of my skin without sacrificing too much of the protective purposes." She looked down at the suit, and the fabric panels started to retract again, leaving her skin bare to the heat of the sun. "But it's hot. And I don't have to worry about sunburn or sunstroke. The nanites mimic your healing factor almost perfectly." She carefully wrapped a tendril of plasmoids around the top quarter of the coconut, then set them off. The top of the coconut popped off as cleanly as if she had sliced it off with a knife. "The port can also be used to charge my nanites."

"'Charge?'" Logan made a face. 'What do you mean, 'charge'?"

"The nanites feed off my own biochemical energy, but if I'm using my plasmoids at the same time, they rely on their own electrical charge gotten from the rechargeable battery at the base of my spine. The battery is small, and if there's a lot of damage for them to fix, the charge gets drained quickly. At the CyberTech lab they have a modified electroshock machine that plugs into the battery and 'charges' my battery up so the nanites have a full supply to draw from if they have to."

Logan made a face. "Ya have ta get electrocuted fer these nanites ta work? Jubes, that's barbaric!"

"I thought so at the time, but I've gotten used to it." Jubilee's voice was quiet. "It's not like I hadn't dealt with it before. At least this time it's on my terms. I say how much, and how long. If I can't handle it all in one session, I make them stop and we pick up again the next day."

"What do you mean, 'not like you hadn't dealt with electroshock before'? Jubilee!" Logan was upset now, and turned his attention from the roasting pig to his former partner.

Jubilee was looking at him with pity in her eyes. "You didn't know what happened, did you, Logan. You didn't stick around long enough to find out." She stared at the coconut in her hands. "The men who had me at the old OZT base were human survivors of the base. Former guards. One of them was Bastion's close associate. He knew where the base was, knew how to operate all the stuff. He got a handful of engineers to get the base working again, and they kidnapped me and brought me there, hoping you would follow and they could kill you. They didn't touch me; they said they wouldn't 'pollute' their bodies with 'mutie filth' like me. They stripped me down to just my underclothes and confined me in a temperature-controlled room kept deliberately cold. They wrapped shackles around my wrists and alternated between hanging me until my hands were black with trapped blood and having me stand while hanging. They didn't give me anything to eat, gave me only a tiny bit to drink, and worst of all they didn't let me sleep. They stuck electrodes to my skin to shock me awake when I fell asleep. After almost a week of sleep deprivation, they put headphones on me and played a tape of anti-mutant stuff. It said awful things; I wasn't human, I was a mistake, an abomination, a dirty filthy mutie slut…I didn't deserve to live, and you guys were so tired of me that you weren't going to come rescue me…stuff like that."

Her voice went flat. "After the sleep and sensory deprivation, the pain, the shocks, all of that…I started believing what they were telling me. And then you guys came to rescue me, and I didn't feel like I was so worthless anymore. Then Kurt died right in front of me, and I learned that Ororo had died trying to cover us while we were escaping and I was unconscious…and you were so wrapped up in your grief over their deaths…I felt like I was responsible, Logan. If I hadn't sneaked out to the mall that day they wouldn't have gotten me. And when you turned to me that day in the library and accused me of being selfish, I realized you were right, they were right, and I really wasn't worth your time and energy. And then you threw the computer and it hit me…the pain was so bad, when I saw you reach down to me, I flinched away because I didn't want you to hurt me, didn't want you to touch me, anymore, because I was bad and dirty and all the things they said.

"Emma and Charles tried to talk to me about it, tried to get me to believe that they cared about me, they loved me…but when I woke up, you were gone, and I thought it was because you didn't care about me anymore, didn't love me. No matter what they said, how much they cared, they weren't you, and you were all I wanted. And I couldn't stand living there, remembering you, thinking that you hated me for what I did…and I left. I packed my stuff and went to live with Aunt Hope in L.A. Even after she died, I never went back. I couldn't. You weren't there, and it wasn't the same without you. Before, when you left, I somehow knew you would come back; but when you left that last time, I didn't get that feeling. And when I woke up and I didn't see you, and your room was empty, and your Jeep and the trailer and your bike and your clothes and your sword and everything was gone, it just hit me that you weren't coming back, and I had driven you away…" She sniffed.

Logan grabbed her in a fierce hug, feeling her body tremble against his. "Jubes, Jubes," he whispered against her hair. "Ya ain't bad, or dirty, or nothin' like that. I love ya. I always loved ya. Always will, too. I left 'cause I didn't think ya was gonna love me, after I'd gone an' hurt ya an' all. I felt guilty 'cause I blamed ya fer something that wasn't yer fault. It wasn't yer fault 'Ro an Kurt died; they decided ta come on the rescue mission for you. There was several things happenin' at once there, Jubilee, an' Scott couldn't go all out on a big rescue mission without compromisin' the other team. So he took volunteers for the old base. Ororo led, an' Kurt an' Rems came too, an' that was it. There was only four of us. Ya weren't ta blame fer what happened; in fact, Scott was more ta blame fer underestimatin' the guys we was goin' up against. He figured since Bastion was out of the picture, whoever this was that had ya was a buncha posers just usin' the old base fer a hideout. We didn't expect the armed welcome; we didn't expect ya ta be that far underground, in them lower levels Bastion built just for his own private use; we wasn't prepared fer all the stuff they threw at us. He cursed himself for not sendin' Frosty; she coulda told us how many people there were so we could bring reinforcements. By the time we got down to the lower levels, we were all of us pretty tired, an' we was only countin' on a quick snatch an' go. We weren't countin' on them guys usin' you as bait to get us. An' Kurt died cause we underestimated 'em. Wasn't yer fault, Jubes. An I was outta line fer blamin' ya for it."

"Then why didn't you explain it to me? Why didn't you come back and apologize, or explain or whatever? I would have forgiven you. You know I never could stay mad at you."

"I tried." Logan's voice was heavy with sorrow. "I came back about a year after I left, ta apologize ta ya an' try ta get ya ta fergive me. But you were already gone, and I…I chickened out, I guess. I didn't wanna face ya in L.A., livin' yer new life an' wakin' up old memories I thought ya wouldn't'a wanted ta dig up. So I kept an eye on ya at a distance, an' tried ta deal with it from there. I was afraid you'd reject my apology, reject me, tell me ya hated me an' ya never wanted ta see me again. 'Cause I realized how much ya meant ta me, how much I…loved ya…an' I couldn't bear ta even think 'bout ya…'bout ya not lovin' me no more…"

"Oh, Wolvie." Jubilee used the nickname she'd tagged him with so long before almost unconsciously, but it had been so long since he'd heard it that a lump rose in his throat. "I love you. I've never stopped loving you. Do you know," she looked at him with those big blue eyes he loved, "I even still have the old hat you gave me? Not the same one…but I got another one exactly like it, put the same wear spots on the brim, the same stains in the crown…and I even light one of those smelly cigars you used to like next to it sometimes so it keeps the same smell."

He laughed a little, reaching out to tweak her nose. "I gotta admit something. I still carry 'round a yellow duster. I even put a little pack of bubblegum in the pocket, so it would look like yours. Hope Carey, my little 'partner' this time, stops at the hotel an' picks my stuff up…but I think yours is pretty much gone. I don't think she'll be able to get to your suite to get your stuff; the guards will probably have confiscated everything in it. I hope ya didn't pack nothin' important."

"I was planning on a quick getaway," Jubilee said. "I packed lightly, and there's nothing in my luggage that I can't replace. I kind of figured this was going to happen." She snorted. "So Rennick won't have to worry about losing all that expensive equipment he told me to requisiton from the Armory."

"Who's Rennick?"

"Sam Rennick. My boss. He brings missions to my 'attention', and he's our link to the higher ups."

"'Our'?"

Jubilee grinned. "Tom and Carl are my friends, and my 'handlers'. Carl is like Hank, he's a doctor who cares for the biological parts of me. Tom's a nanotech specialist; he takes care of my cybernetic organs and my nanites and my charging systems." She sniffed deeply. "And unless I miss my guess, if that pig burns any more I'm going to have to have Tom replace my stomach after I eat that."

Logan laughed and went back to the roasting pit, turning the pig before it burned too badly on that side. "Carey's looking for us," he said. "Has ta be. I'll bet money on the fact that she was responsible fer the shield going down at just that moment. She slapped a tracer on my back right before I followed yer scream up the stairs. I think she was expecting something like this to happen." He cut into the pig's haunch with his claw. "Well, it ain't gourmet food, but it'll do. Come on, time to eat. Split another of them coconuts for me, will ya?"


	9. Rescue

Chapter 9: Rescue

The sound of a hovercraft engine caught their attention just as they were finishing up their impromptu 'breakfast'. Jubilee stood, shading her eyes, looking at the horizon, searching for the source of the noise. "Logan! Look!"

He looked.

There was a small watercraft heading straight for them. Somewhat similar to the hovercrafts used back when Logan and Jubilee were both with the X-Men, but with a 22nd century twist; it ran on solar power and electricity, not gasoline or other liquid fuel substances. And as it came closer, Logan saw the figure behind the joystick-like controls of the boat. Carey.

She raised her voice above the sound of the engine. "When I get close get in! We can't linger, there are guards on my tail!" Jubilee sprang up and started wading out to deeper water. The watercraft wouldn't be able to come in close to the rocky shoreline, so they would have to go out to it. Logan followed her.

Carey steered the craft between two large rocks and maneuvered into the relatively calm pocket of water behind it. Jubilee gritted her teeth, grabbed Logan around the waist, and blasted off with her paffs. Not a long burst, just a short, controlled one that landed them safely in the back seat of the watercraft. "Hang on! Here we go!" Carey shouted unnecessarily over the sound of the wind. They did so, grabbing the backs of the front seats and hanging on for dear life as Carey swung the craft around in a tight arc and zoomed out of the mini lagoon formed by the two large rocks.

As soon as they got back out to open water, Jubilee saw what she meant. There were three speedboats closing in on them, and their little island, fast. And they were painted in the colors of the dictator's livery.

Carey slammed the guide sticks of heir smaller craft down, and the craft leaped forward. "I was heading out here when they ambushed me!" She called to Logan over the sound of the boat's engine. "I was trying to make like I was just out here for a pleasure ride, but they didn't buy it. All I could do was run for it."

Logan looked back. "They're gaining on us," he said grimly. "Can this thing go any faster?"

"No," Carey said grimly. "But now that you're here…" she gave him the guide sticks for the boat and slipped past him into the back seat. Raising her hands, she closed her eyes in concentration.

A wall of water rose between their boat and their pursuers. It towered over the pursuing boats, threatening to swamp them and capsize the smaller, lighter, faster craft on its downstroke. The men in those other boats, shouting frantically, tried to turn the wheels of their boats to avoid colliding with the wall of water, but for the boat in front, it was too late. It disappeared into that wall of water, and Carey collapsed it. The boat shattered under the weight of the water like matchsticks. Only a few pieces of the boat floated back to the surface; there were no survivors of the three men in the craft.

The other two boats, however, sped up, as if the death of their comrades had spurred them on. Carey raised her hands, preparatory to sending another wave out to them, when Jubilee stepped up beside her. "I'll take care of them," she said coolly. "I may be tired, but I can still take care of them. Get back to piloting the boat." She eyed their pursuers carefully, juggling a handful of plasmoids in each hand. Tossing them almost casually into the water, she called, "Logan, step on it! We don't want to be caught in the aftershock of the blast!" Logan responded by pushing the boat's speed up another notch, and the watercraft peeled away from the other boats, its engine whining in protest.

The other boats hit the exact spot where she had dropped the plasmoids…and she detonated them.

The effect was that of a stick of dynamite dropped in the water under the pursuing boats. Jubilee controlled the direction of the blasts upwards, punching in the hulls of the boats as if they were made of cardboard. Water sprayed up around the sides of the boats, actually carrying the boats upward off the surface of the water a short way before the energy from the blast dissipated and dropped them back into the water. Carey took the water that had been displaced by the blast and used it to flip the boats over, slamming it back down onto the surface of the water; and Jubilee threw a couple of plasmoids at them, sinking them.

There were no survivors.

Carey grinned victoriously as she headed back for the front of the boat, taking the guide sticks from Logan and throttling down the power gradually until they were floating peacefully on an expanse of blue ocean. "That was great! You can be on my team anytime. In fact, I might just ask him for the pair of you!"

Jubilee moved so fast Logan almost missed her sudden flurry. She had Carey pressed against the rail on the side of the boat, threatening her with a paff over her head, before Logan could react. "'Your team'," Jubilee enunciated with deliberate slowness. "'Ask him'. Who's 'him', and what team are you talking about?" She brought the glowing multi-colored ball of light closer to Carey's face.

"That would be me," said a male voice from the radio in the front of the boat. "Jubilee, Logan, please. Don't shoot the messenger. Carey was acting on my orders. Reluctantly, but she was acting on my orders."

Jubilee frowned, looked at Logan. Logan frowned too. That voice…

And then a craft 'uncloaked' right in front of their boat. It had been hovering apparently in midair, cloaked and unseen, probably watching the whole fight. It was one of the small personal carriers, the kind that rich people used to shuttle back and forth over the Earth's oceans. It could seat six people, and had almost all the comforts of 'home'; the rich liked having everything they wanted at their fingertips. Some things never changed. What did make this craft different was the prow bristling with self-defense armament; guns, huge laser cannons, other kinds of energy weapons and a few primitive projectile weapons. They looked out of place on the sleek, silvery personal craft, but Jubilee ignored all of that as she continued to hold Carey hostage against the rail, her eyes narrowed.

"She was acting on my orders," the voice said again. "So she shouldn't be held accountable for what happened. Come on, Jubilee…or should I call you Nightshade now? And 'Patch'. Come on in, and we'll talk." A hatch in the side of the personal aircraft opened up, and a tall, heavily muscled figure with a shock of silver hair and one glowing cybernetic eye stood in the opening.

Jubilee released Carey, and stared, mouth opening and closing several times before she could get a word out. "Nate?" she finally got out. "Nathan Summers?"

"In the flesh," said Cable, smiling a bit at Jubilee and Logan's discomfiture. "Currently leader of the X-Men. I've had an eye toward recruiting you both for the new team for the last several years, that's why Carey was sent to you, Logan. I tried to send someone after you, Jubilee…but he's only managed to get superficially close to you. Technology might have advanced the last hundred years or so, but the government's paranoia is still the same." He held out a hand. "Come on. Come aboard."

Jubilee made the jump from the watercraft to the hovering aircraft easily, followed by Logan and Carey. "Carey. Any more pursuers?" Cable asked easily.

"None," Carey said. "But we might not want to linger. Just blast the craft and let's go. I want a hot shower and something to eat. I've been following Logan's signal since last night and I'm tired."

Nate stepped over and pressed a button on the control panel. "We're cloaked. They won't find us. Now, Logan, Jubilee…"

"Nightshade," Jubilee said quickly, firmly.

"…Nightshade," Cable said. "Look. The dictator's guards know you were on that island. They just didn't know where. With the damage trail you left behind, it would be pretty easy to convince anyone that the chase ended in a boat wreck and all three of you perished; Carey, the assassin known as 'Patch', and the government assassin named 'Nightshade.' It's a chance for the two of you to cut ties with your lives and come back and rejoin the X-Men, such as we are, now. I'd love to give you some time to think it over, but this is probably the only chance we're going to get to fake your deaths and give you the opportunity to start over. Instead of killing for money, come back to working for the 'good guys'. What do you say?"

Logan swallowed hard. Return to the X-Men, run with the team, not under Scott, but his son, Nathan. Logan respected Nathan more than he respected Scott. Scott might have been a good leader and tactician, but Logan hadn't really liked him personally. He had no such reservations about Nate.

And really, what did he have back in Madripoor? Kathy's grandfather had been his friend since he'd left the X-Men after the incident with Jubilee all those years ago. Then her father, and when she had come along, Kathy herself. Which was why he'd gotten her a job keeping bar for him. She knew he was unusually 'long lived', she knew he had secrets and that he could come and go at any time. She'd never take it for granted that he'd died in a boat accident; but she would act as though he had, out of a sense of discretion. And since he never knew what might happen on a mission, he'd left a living will stating that Kathy would own the bar if anything happened to him. So she would take over. And when things had died down a little, if a letter came from overseas telling her that everything wasn't the way it seemed and to continue depositing half the profits from the bar into Logan's account, she would do just that, and be discreet about it.

He shrugged. "I will if Jubes will," he said.

Jubilee was torn. Not that she was particularly fond of her 'job'; but there were other things to consider. Her technologic enhancements needed to be maintained regularly, or she would die; she didn't have the know-how to do it. The only people who knew how to work with her enhancements were back at CyberTech; Carl and Tom. And the lab full of equipment was, as far as she knew, unique in the world. The mansion wouldn't have the equipment necessary to maintain her nanites or the cybernetic organs. And her friends, Tom and Carl…what would happen to them? Would they be able to keep their jobs with Cybertech? Or would they be dismissed? She didn't want to cause them any problems with her sudden 'defection'.

"I'm going to have to decline," she said at last. "I'm sorry, Nate, Logan, I'd like to, but…There are people whose jobs and lives revolve around my nanites and my techno-organic enhancements. I can't afford to be selfish about this, as much as I'd like to. If I left they'd be out of jobs…and anyway, I don't think you have any nanotech specialists on the team who could charge my nanites and maintain my cybernetic organs."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "Tom and Carl? Your handlers?" he remembered her mentioning those names. Then he flushed. Of course. Jubilee was a beautiful young woman. Why shouldn't she have some long-term relationships? And of course she wouldn't want to leave her boyfriend behind for him and the X-Men. What was he thinking?

"No, no, not like that," Jubilee said quickly, correctly surmising the reason for Logan's flush. "They're just friends. They're actually a couple. But they were hired especially for Project Nightshade. If I suddenly vanished…died…whatever, it would cause a lot of trouble for them. And I owe them a lot. They've been my only friends for…a long time now." She didn't want to think just how long. There had been other mutants involved with Project Nightshade, her team members, but even when they'd been alive she hadn't really been close to any of them.

The project heads had decided that distance between the team members was to be desired; if a mission suddenly 'went south' the rest of the team had to be able to get out fast. Even if it meant leaving someone behind. And it was easier to leave someone behind if there was no spirit of 'brotherhood' among them. In many ways, Jubilee had blamed the loss of her entire team on that; they hadn't had the close bond necessary to truly work as a seamless team; the kind of close bond she'd had with the X-Men.

In the confused welter of interrogations and debriefings after they had all died, she had told them why she thought they failed in their objective…and the higher-ups hadn't been pleased. It was Carl and Tom who, with their sympathy and support, had helped her recover emotionally from the grief and guilt associated with all those deaths; they had been there, had put her back together after the treatments and the intensive interrogations had shattered her mentally and emotionally, and helped her heal. She simply couldn't leave them hanging. So, "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can't."

Nate looked disappointed. Logan shook his head. "I'll come," he said. "And Jubes…I hope you change your mind."

"Well, one out of two ain't bad," Nate said. "All right. Carey, vaporize that boat you all were on. We'll stop off at Jubilee's apartment in Washington and drop her off, then head up to the mansion. Got to get Logan settled in."

Jubilee gave him a watery smile. "I'm sorry, Nate," she said. "But I have a lot of people depending on me right now for their jobs, their livelihood. I can't just leave. Really."

Nate sighed. "I understand," he said quietly. "I don't agree; you volunteered for this project almost sixty years ago; you've done your bit for them; you don't owe anybody anything. But it's your decision to make." He led the way to the interior of the craft, away from the bright flash as their boat was destroyed, and opened up a slot in the wall. "In the meantime, here's something to eat. You have to be hungry. And there are some clean clothes in the drawers there if you want to change, and a sonic shower."

Jubilee sighed. "I'll take the sonic first. I'm still pretty full. I ate a pig, after all." She gave Logan a wicked grin as she grabbed a dark jumpsuit from the pile in the drawer and disappeared into the booth.

Nate looked quizzically at Logan. "Ate a pig?' Did she mean ate like a pig?"

"Nope." Logan grinned at Nate. "We ate wild pig this morning. Caught one on the island and killed it, then ate it." He grinned at the other man's look of distaste and sat down at the table with the snacks that Nate had put out for them.

Jubilee emerged from the sonic a few minutes later, her suit carefully folded up and wearing the jumpsuit she'd taken. She took a seat at the small table and nibbled daintily on an apple Nate tossed her as she listened to the two men catch up on what had been happening with the X-Men in the last hundred years or so. Still tired, she let her eyes drift closed.

She awakened as the personal craft set down, still cloaked, on the rooftop of her apartment building. She disembarked first, then hesitated. It seemed somehow rude, to just let them leave. Finally she blurted out "Want to come in? Just for a moment? Maybe some real coffee or something?"

"Coffee?" Nate perked. "The old-fashioned ground up coffee bean type coffee? Or the synthetic stuff they make now?"

Jubilee grinned. "The real stuff. I get an almost embarrassing amount of money from the government for what I do, and I splurge occasionally on luxuries. Like real coffee instead of the synthetic stuff, and cigars instead of the imitations."

Nate and Carey perked up. So did Logan. "Lead on."

She led the way into her apartment via the penthouse balcony door that led out to the rooftop…and stopped. There were voices coming from her bedroom. Cursing herself for being so lax as to leave her suit on the craft, she dropped to a fighting crouch and started to gather energy for a plasmoid buildup. Motioning the others to stay back, she advanced into her apartment carefully, inching along the wall, every sense alert. The voices started to move, and she pinpointed them as coming across her bedroom from the drawers. As the owner of the voice reached the door, she gathered herself, whipped around the doorframe, and paffed the intruder full in the face. Then she fired off a volley of paffs into the darkened room, hoping the sudden brightness would incapacitate the vision of the persons (there was more than one) in the room. Not enough to kill, but enough to stun. It was something she'd learned from Logan; shoot first, ask questions later.

The sound of groans assured her that whoever the intruder were, they were down. She wouldn't get any further trouble from them. She stepped into the room and snapped, "Lights on full." Light flooded her room.

She wasn't prepared for who she saw.


	10. Defection

Chapter 10: Defection

"CARL! Tom! Riley!"

Jubilee stood frozen in the doorway, staring in shock as her three friends blinked up at her from the floor of her bedroom. "What are you…how did…" She stopped, at a complete loss for words.

Carl rose first, blinking the spots from his eyes, and staggered over to Tom. "Tom? You okay?" He gave the smaller man a hand up, ignoring Jubilee for the moment. Jubilee left Logan, Carey, and Nate standing by the door as she reached down to Riley.

"You guys okay? I didn't hit you all that hard, did I?" she asked anxiously. "Riley? Say something. Please?"

Riley looked up and grinned crookedly. "Hi, boss."

Jubilee frowned. "'Boss'? I'm not your…boss…" she trailed off as she followed his line of sight to the door. "Nate." Her eyes narrowed as the pieces clicked into place. "Nate? Riley was your contact with me?"

It was Riley who answered. "Guilty." He touched the 'watch' on his arm, and his outline shimmered, changing from the smiling good-natured visage that she saw so often to a taller, broader-shouldered, much more muscled man with slit-pupil yellow cat's eyes, a shock of almost orange hair, and four fingers that ended in sticky pads. "Also known as 'Gecko', to my friends." He indicated her apartment, and the blinking Tom and Carl, behind him. "We were going to come here and pick up your stuff so you wouldn't have to come here and pack." He turned to Nate. "I was going to give them two of our new image inducers and take them to the airport, and take a commercial flight to New York. I guess, now that you're here, we can scrap the plans and just go with you?"

Nate shook his head. "Nightshade has opted not to join us. As much as we might not like her decision, she has the right to make it."

Carl made a choked coughing sound that made everyone turn to look at him. "Jubes? You refused? Why the hell would you do something stupid like that?"

Jubilee stammered for a moment, caught off guard. "Hold on here," she said finally. "Stop. Rewind. I refused because if I went with the X-Men instead of staying with Project Nightshade, you would be out of a job. Tom might still find work somewhere in the corporation with his knowledge of nanotechnology, but you'd be out of a job."

"She didn't know?" Carl asked Nate by way of Riley.

"I didn't tell Nate you were coming," Riley said. "After all, I hadn't been able to call him and tell him you insisted on defecting, too."

Jubilee shook her head. "Wait a minute here. I'm hungry and my nanites aren't working right, so I'm going to take a shower, a real one, while Tom and Carl set up my portable charger. You all make yourselves at home. There's coffee in the cabinets in the kitchen, real coffee, not synth, and you can all help yourselves to whatever I might have in my refrigerator. I'm going to shower, and dress, and when I get out I'll charge up. Then we'll sit down and talk." She shook her head and disappeared into the bathroom.

Carey poked Logan in the ribs. "Is she always this…forceful?"

Logan had to grin. "Since I met her," he said. "Come on. I could use some coffee."

By the time Jubilee had gotten out of the shower, Tom had set up her portable recharger. It consisted of a small electrical pack he plugged into the wall and inserted the plug into her port in the back. Jubilee picked up the two small barbell-type 'handles' feeding into the other side of the machine, and Tom opened the current up. "Twenty percent," he said.

She shook her head "Forty."

Tom shook his head. "The nanites aren't working because the dampening field at Estillo's palace shut them down too quickly, and they haven't been told to 'wake up' yet. If I start feeding that much electric into them they'll start zooming around in your blood so fast they might rupture a major blood vessel."

Carl looked at Tom. "Twenty, Tom. No more. We don't want her friends to think we torture her, after all."

"Well, isn't that what this is all about?" Tom muttered, but he adjusted the flow to twenty percent. Jubilee's hands tightened instinctively on the 'handles', her teeth clenching around her moan and her eyes squeezed shut. Nate watched in silence, soberly. Carey stared wide-eyed. Riley shuddered and looked away. Logan refused to watch at all. He retreated to the kitchen and began to fix a huge sandwich for Jubilee.

By the time he came back out Tom was unplugging the charger from Jubilee's back, and she was putting the handles down. Her sigh of relief was inaudible to anyone but him, and he handed her her sandwich carefully, trying not to let the sight of her hands shaking bother him. She could read the tension in his body language, though, but neither one brought it up.

"Now, while I eat, tell me what's going on. Starting with you," she pointed to Nate.

Nathan leaned back against the plush stuffed pillows of the couch. "Okay. After you left, Charles and Dad were really upset. Charles started using all his contacts in the government and in all parts of the world, to keep track of where you were and who you were with. Once an X-Man, always an X-Man, I guess. When Charles died, he left everything to Dad. Dad left it all to me when he died. And I've been keeping tabs on both you and Logan since. Not always by Carey and Riley. Actually, Jubilee, one of your former teammates for Project Nightshade was an…ally of ours…of sorts. Not a member of the team, but a mercenary who signed on to the Project. I approached him with money to bribe him to keep track of you, and he did…up until he got killed on that mission ten years ago."

Jubilee thought back to her teammates. "Hemlock," she said. "Hemlock. He was the only one who dared defy our orders to try and get close to me, and his death was the one I regret the most." She looked at Nate sorrowfully. "He didn't deserve to die the way he did. I'm sorry. If I'd been a better leader, that mission wouldn't have gone so wrong and maybe more of us would have made it back."

"Don't blame yourself," Nate said, his voice kind. "From what I heard in the messages he managed to get out to us, Project Nightshade's leaders weren't preparing you adequately to lead a team. And what you were put in charge of wasn't a team; just a bunch of different people working toward the same goal. There was no bond between the team members; you, of all people, should know from the days of running with Dad and the rest of the X-Men, that a close bond with your teammates can make the difference between life and death, between who goes home and who doesn't. From the few reports we received after the incident, I don't know how you survived, after what happened to you. And I slipped Gecko in there after that to try and keep better tabs on you, to try and give me a clearer picture of how the Project was organized."

"What about Logan?"

Nate grinned widely, teeth flashing. "He was a lot easier. The name 'Patch' Logan is almost legendary in Madripoor, did you know that? Logan, you also got quite a reputation for being a conscientious killer for hire. I sent Manny to you with a contract out for that former criminal, and you turned it down and threw him out. I was hoping you wouldn't do the same when I sent him to you with Estillo's contract."

Logan stared at Nate incredulously. "You set all that up?"

Nate nodded. "Yes. It was time to bring you and Nightshade 'back to the fold', as it were. She's becoming increasingly disenchanted with her boss and her job, and you were stagnating in lowtown Madripoor. Both of you need a change. When Gecko told me Rennick was sending you after that petty dictator, I sent one of our contacts out to Logan with the contract on Estillo. That whole thing was a setup to get the two of you together. Carey was there to make sure you two saw and talked to each other…and then Gecko was supposed to get you out right before the palace blew up. At least, that's the way it was supposed to happen. When Logan took off after you, Carey figured you both would kill Estillo and find your own way out of there. We'd already seen you demonstrate your 'flying' ability; she figured if she brought the shield down, you could get away. Then she got out of there. The tracer she slipped on Logan helped her find you the next morning, and we decided on the way there that we'd destroy the boat so it would look like you all were killed trying to escape. It would hopefully be convincing enough that the government wouldn't look too hard for Nightshade and you both could 'die' and resume your lives as someone else." He smiled. "What I don't know is what Gecko's doing here. Care to explain?"

The big man shrugged. "When you told me what you had planned, Nate, I went and told Shady's friends Carl and Tom that she was going to be 'disappearing' and to not grieve for her because she wasn't really dead. I didn't mean to give them the information, but they can be very persuasive when they want to be. Especially Carl there." Gecko rubbed a dusky discoloration on his chin ruefully. Carl blushed but didn't look at all repentant. "I told them that Shady was going to be 'defecting' from the government...well, I didn't know," he said to Jubilee, who looked indignant that he had guessed at what she would do. "I knew you weren't really happy killing for money, for the government. Tom asked where you were going to be going. I told him. And then he asked if we had any specialists in nanotechnology to handle your nanites. I told him no. So he and Carl offered to come along. They wanted to defect too, Nate. Who was I to tell them no?" Gecko shook his head. "So we came here to pack up some of the equipment she has that she needs, and some personal mementos that Carl and Tom thought she would want, and we were doing that when you guys showed up here and Shady sprayed us with those living fireworks."

Jubilee turned pink. "Oh damn. Look, guys, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I really thought someone had broken in and was trashing my place. Forgive me?"

Tom eyed her warily. "As long as you tell us our 'retirement' letters to Rennick wasn't wasted and we _are_ getting the heck out of Dodge."

Jubilee stared at him, mouth hanging open. "What?"

Carl placed a hand on Tom's knee to quiet him. "What he's trying to say, Jubilee, is that we're tired of the whole Project bit. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have signed on in the first place.

"You know, when we first did a walk through of the Project and the facility we didn't even know your name yet. They showed us the whole facility, then we saw you lying on the regen bed getting your nanites charged up. The guys who were doing it were jackasses. They didn't even try to make it any more comfortable for you, even as bad as it was then. They just strapped you in and plugged you in and ran that current through you like you were just some big battery, instead of a human being. Tom saw a million different ways the process could be made easier for you, and he felt sorry for you, being shoved around like that. That was why we signed on.

"After we were put in charge of you and made your 'handlers', the first thing to go was that barbaric chair and straps. And he found a way to control the power feed, control the levels of electricity going in, and I found that lower levels didn't stress your body and brain out so much. We hate seeing what this charging stuff does to you. We hate seeing you walk off on missions you might never come back from. We hate seeing you bowing and scraping and kissing Rennick's ass. We wanted to walk out so many times. We've actually been talking about it again the last week or so. But we couldn't just walk away and leave you to the mercies of these jokers in charge of the Project. If we left Rennick will probably bring in someone worse than us to be your new handlers, and you'll go back to being just an object to them."

"Yeah," Tom said heatedly, sitting up. "When Riley—or Gecko—came to us and told us you were defecting, you had faked your own death and were leaving, we were overjoyed. Finally you were going to get out of that hellhole! But to make sure you would be able to enjoy that freedom, someone had to come along who could care for your nanites. So we wrote little letters saying since you were dead, we were leaving, and we'd had enough of CyberTech. We promised them we wouldn't talk about company secrets, and we left. Rennick should be getting those letters when he walks in this morning. Wish I could be there to see his face!" he chortled. "So. Look at it this way, Jubes. You either come with us to wherever it is Riley wants to take us, or you get tied up and forcibly lugged along. Personally, I'd rather you went on your own steam; be kind of hard to explain why we're lugging around a struggling female over Carl's shoulder…but if we have to do it that way, we will."

Jubilee studied Tom's face, serious under his thatch of red hair, and then Carl's expression, set and unyielding under his garishly-dyed platinum blond fuzz. "You mean it?" she asked finally. "You guys would give up all that money, the nice apartments, all the perks of working for a huge government contractor, just to make sure I was happy?"

Tom sighed. "You're our friend, Jubilee," he said as gently as he could. "If I weren't sure of my orientation, and I didn't have Carl…well. But you're a very close friend, almost a sister, to us. We want to see you happy. What use is money if you can't enjoy it? I mean, look at you. Cybertech pays you an almost embarrassing amount of money for being their first guinea pig; but you're not enjoying it."

"No," Jubilee said quietly. "I'm not." She reached out and folded them both into a hug, one in each arm. "Thanks guys," she whispered, too softly for anyone but Logan with his enhanced senses to hear it. She gave each of them a squeeze, which they returned…and then turned to Nate and Logan. "All right. I'm in. We're all in."

Nate smiled broadly. Logan muttered, "Took yer time about it," but didn't say anything else, and his smile belied the gruff tone.

Nathan sighed. "All right. Gecko and I are going back to the mansion via regular transport. Jubilee, Carl, Tom, Logan, and Carey, take the cloaked craft we used to get here and go to Logan's place in Madripoor to pick up his stuff. Then come directly to the mansion from there. Okay?"

"Gotcha, Boss," Tom, Carl, Carey, and Gecko chorused, teasingly. Logan caught Jubilee's eye over their heads and smiled at her. Finally, after so long, they were going home.

Rennick stared around the lab, incredulous. Gone was everything that made the lab seem used. All the medical instruments were packed away or placed neatly in their places; the regen bed was bare, as if the user didn't intend to return to it. The equipment was all powered down and silent. And in the middle of that regen bed were two squares of folded paper.

He picked up the first one, opened it incredulously. Read it. And scowled as he opened the second letter. Read this one. Angry, he threw the notes to the floor and stomped out, heading for the data room for Project Nightshade.

"Has security seen Professor Tom Donaldson or Doctor Carl Windham today?' he fumed to the man sitting at the desk just inside the room.

The man checked the computer's sign in sheet. "Uh, they left in the company of Security Officer Aaron Riley," the man said, "Very early this morning." He showed Rennick the sign in screen.

Rennick made a strangled sound in his throat and hurried farther into the room, approaching a tall man who stood at the far end of the room looking at a dim figure floating in a large tank of viscous green fluid. 'The project has been compromised," he said to the man, his superior. "Professor Donaldson and Dr. Windham left these in Nightshade's lab. And Nightshade herself has been declared missing."

The man remained calm. "Indeed," he said gravely. "I trust you saw this morning's reports? There were no biological remnants left with the wreckage of the boat. Therefore, since her disappearance and theirs coincide, we must assume they're all together." He turned to a nearby technician. "Activate the tracking device."

"T-tracking device?" Rennick frowned. "What tracking device?"

"When the surgical modifications were first implemented in Nightshade's body, the government authorized the installment of a small implanted tracking device. It's a microchip attached to the inner curve of her pelvic girdle, held in place by an adhesive and also prevented from slipping by the weight of her intestinal mass. We put it there and hid its existence from her, and from her handlers so that if she ever went missing or tried to defect, we would have a way to bring her back. The tracking device can be traced via GPS; and it will also incapacitate Nightshade so that we can recover her safely." He turned his attention to the huge floor-to-ceiling screen, on which was displayed a map of the world.

A small red dot appeared on the screen. Currently over ocean, it was definitely heading toward Europe and maybe parts east.

"Continue tracking that signal," The man told the technician. "Notify me when it comes to rest for more than an hour, and then activate its secondary programming." Turning away from the screen, he returned to his brown study of the tank and the dim figure inside it. "Nightshade appears to have impeccable timing," he said to Rennick conversationally. "Project Exterminator is about to go online. Pitting it against Nightshade will be the ultimate test of its capabilities." Rennick stared at the tank. Though its features were hard to make out amidst the green gel filling it, he didn't have to see it to know what Project Exterminator looked like.

But he didn't have enough compassion for Nightshade to truly feel sorry for the way she was going to die. After all, she was only another government project.


	11. Madripoor

Chapter 11: Madripoor

There really weren't a whole lot of places in Madripoor to park a personal craft the size of the one they arrived in. Carey, who was piloting, finally huffed in exasperation and headed for a large parking garage uptown of where Logan's apartment was. "Go on," she said. "We'll wait here with the craft. It won't take long for Logan to pack; it never does. Oh, Jubilee; if you could just slip into my apartment—Logan has my keycode—and pack my things, I'd be obliged." She smiled at Jubilee.

Jubilee raised her eyebrow. "Oh, Logan has your keycode?" she said, raising her eyebrow. "My, we've been a bad little boy, haven't we?" She giggled at Logan's annoyed look.

Logan swatted her irritably. "Get on with ya."

Carl and Tom were entranced. "So hey, you mind if Carl and I go sightseeing a little?" Tom asked the group at large, his eyes sparkling. "We've never been out of the US before. I want to look around a little, see what a dive like this has by way of technology—"

"And I want to sample the food," Carl said.

Jubilee smiled at her friends. "Sure. We'll meet you at Logan's apartment in an hour." She slipped a piece of paper into Carl's hand. "This is the address. One hour, okay?" She waggled a finger at him. "I trust you'll pry Tom away from whatever he's looking at at the time."

"Yeah," Carl grinned. "Okay. Come on, Tom." They exited the craft.

Carey watched them go. "Quite the pair, those two," she said cheerfully. "All right. I'll see you back here in about an hour and a half."

Logan led the way off the craft, Jubilee following. She looked around at the buildings around them, noting the proliferation of concrete and steel. "Wow," she said, impressed. "I guess modern technology finally caught up with the ol' home town, didn't it?"

Logan grinned at her. "Yeah. Still can find plenty o' bars, though. C'mon, there's someone I want ya ta meet." At her wary expression, he smiled. "No, not like that. She's actually tendin' bar for me. Her name's Kathy."

They threaded their way along the streets, Logan showing her the landmarks and stuff that had changed since the days of Jubilee's teens, hanging out with him here. Jubilee absorbed it all, wide eyed, shook her head wistfully when she saw the spot where the Princess Bar used to be. Logan saw her wistful look. "Yeah, brings back memories, don't it?" he said sympathetically. "I tried ta keep a hint o' the old Princess alive in the Glass an' Tap. C'mon." He led the way down a side street to a small entrance, opened the door, stepped aside, and let Jubilee pass in first.

As soon as Jubilee entered, she was transported back to the old days. The Glass and Tap still had the old hanging lamps with nostalgic bulbs, though Jubilee suspected the bulbs weren't like the lightbulbs of old. At least there was none of the more modern bright recessed lighting. In the corner was an old jukebox, battered but still playable, and the walls were lined with booths upholstered in vinyl, not the gel-filled synth stuff that was now prevalent everywhere. There were old-fashioned ashtrays at the tables, although the ashtrays were now fitted with the new smoke removal systems that sucked cigarette smoke in. And there were real wooden stools at the bar, upholstered in vinyl too, and behind the bar stood a woman, wiping down and old-fashioned glass with a towel.

"Hey," she greeted Logan cordially. "Nice to see you. Figured I'd be seeing you here; the news just hit the world press. They tried to keep it quiet for a day, I guess; but it was bound to get out sooner or later." She noticed Jubilee, standing beside Logan, her eyes still roving around the bar. "New girlfriend?"

Logan grinned at her. "Nah. Ol' friend. Very old friend. Kathy, meet Jubilee. Jubilee, Kathy."

"Nightshade," Jubilee said, friendly but still slightly guarded. "Only my close friends call me Jubilee." Unspoken was the implication that Kathy wasn't a close enough friend to use her old nickname.

Kathy nodded, picking up on the slight coolness but unfazed by it. "Nightshade, then. Nice to meet you." They shook hands briefly, and Kathy said, "So, you staying, Patch, or heading out somewhere after this?"

Logan leaned across the bar. "After this, I gotta lie low for a while. An' I received an invitation to visit the states fer an…extended stay…from an old friend o' mine. I'm gonna leave the bar to ya. Don't tell nobody where I gone, eh? Say ya ain't seen me since the Dictator died."

Kathy nodded. Her grandfather had talked about Logan's disappearing for extended periods; her father had done the same. And she remembered several times when she was young asking her father where 'Unca Logan' was, and being told he was 'away on business'. She was old enough to know that she really didn't want to know what that business was. "Okay. I should deposit the profits into your account like we arranged?"

Logan nodded. "Yep."

Kathy grinned. "Can do." She slapped him on the back. "Have a nice…trip. Don't be a stranger." She reached for a glass, poured a generous amount of his favorite liquor into it, and plunked it down in front of him. Then she did the same for Jubilee. "One for the road." She grinned before heading down the bar to talk to their first patron of the night.

Jubilee picked up her glass stein, clinked it with Logan, grinned, and tossed back a mouthful. And hacked. "Damn," she wheezed. "What is that stuff? Feels like it's taking the enamel off my teeth!"

Logan grinned unrepentantly. 'Home brew," he said wickedly. "Got a small brewery out back. Very strong stuff."

"I'll say!" Jubilee swallowed another mouthful. This time the wheezing wasn't as bad.

By the time she had drunk half the stein, she wasn't feeling the kick at all. In fact, she was feeling relatively mellow. And she asked Logan a question she'd been wanting to ask him for almost a century. "Logan," she said quietly, "What happened when you guys came to rescue me?"

Logan sighed. He knew he'd have to tell her sooner or later; might as well be now. "Those mutant haters who captured you and took you to the Hulkbuster base left a piece of equipment, one of the old restraint devices (like the one they used on me) beside your bike outside the mall. They knew we would recognize the design as one Bastion used; and they knew we would follow you to the Hulkbuster base.

"But we was dealin' with a coupla things that were kinda demandin' attention. The FOH were holding an anti-mutant rally in front of the UN building in New York City, an' right across the street was a pro-mutant rally. They were hurlin' insults at each other an' ready ta break out in a huge fight. We an' practically every superhero team in the area were called in ta help break it up. An' at the same time we got a call from Alpha Flight sayin' they'd found a cell of super-Sentinels, like what Bastion turned Mustang inta, up in Canada. They wanted our help in apprehending them and confining them. Apparently the Canadian government had some kinda new deprogramming thing they wanted to try, and they wanted our help. So we had two emergencies to deal with an' we wanted ta get to ya as soon as possible too." His eyes were dark as he looked at her. "We knew they wouldn't kill you, cause you were supposed to be the bait that drew us in. But we couldn't leave ya there neither; seein' what happened ta ya the last time ya was in there, we hadda go get ya. Scott put 'Ro in charge o' rescuin' ya, an' she chose Kurt and Rems ta go with her. That was gonna be it…but I insisted on goin' ta rescue you too, even though Scott wanted me up in Canada helpin' Alpha Flight.

"It took so long for them ta get the teams sorted out that I almost went after ya myself. Woulda been quicker an' faster. Scott told me ta wait fer the rest o' the team, an' even though it went against my instincts, I listened ta him an' I waited.

"In retrospect, I shoulda gone myself. I coulda had ya back by the time the team got sorted out, but I waited for them. We took one of the smaller jets out ta New Mexico, an' set down there. We went in, took out the two guards watchin' the upper level, an' Ororo stayed there tryin' ta figure out the controls while I took Kurt and Remy down there ta rescue you. We kept runnin' inta obstacles along the way; they had set a lot of booby traps along the way. Remy got hurt when one o' his cards tossed at a wall that was supposedly solid blew the wall apart and he got banged up some with the shrapnel.

"We ran into a big group of them soldiers about two levels over the one where ya were. They put up quite a fight; we all got hurt. But we took them out. One of them, when I 'asked' him where ya were, told me which level you was on. And after that, we figured they couldn't have much more security, and we underestimated them. We went down the last two levels unimpeded, and we figured there weren't any more, so Kurt teleported directly into your cell to get you out. Remy and I were halfway down the corridor when we heard the gunshots, and by the time we got into the cell, Kurt was dead." He swallowed. "I think I went berserk; I was so angry that he'd died 'cause I'd sent him on ahead that I took it out on them soldiers. And when the dust cleared, and I saw how bad off ya was…well, it didn't help the rage any. You followed Remy blindly after he freed you; seeing you could walk, he picked Kurt up and we made tracks outta there, pursued by the guys from further down your level. The ringleaders, I guess.

"When we got up to the surface, you collapsed. I picked ya up an' carried ya, Remy carried Kurt. Ororo saw we had injured, so she tried to cover our retreat. Just before we reached the mini-jet, a sharpshooter caught her right in the middle of her back. She just barely managed to make it into the jet before she collapsed. Remy and I took the controls, and we got outta there. By the time we were far enough away that we could put the mini-jet on autopilot and look at her and Kurt…" he swallowed hard and drained his mug. "…Kurt was dead, and Ororo died right there in front of me. The last thing she said was 'I love you' to me." He sighed. "And we had been talking about maybe getting married."

"Logan…" Jubilee couldn't think of a thing to say. She picked up her mug and drained it, barely feeling the kick of the brew as it hit her stomach. "I'm sorry, Logan. I didn't know. I barely remember following Remy up to the surface; my last clear memory was of Kurt collapsing, but I didn't know he was dead. And Ororo…" Jubilee felt tears sting her eyes, even after all this time. It still hurt. "She was my friend too. Kind of an older sister. I blamed myself for their deaths, more so when I saw how much it affected you. Emma tried to tell me it wasn't my fault, tried to convince me, but I still blamed myself. She finally told me to go talk to you, that day in the library, and you would tell me it wasn't my fault. So I went to talk to you…and you just reinforced everything I'd been telling myself. And then you threw the computer, and it hit me…and I felt kind of like I deserved it. And when I woke up later in the medlabs with my shoulder all bandaged up, you were gone…and I thought it was my fault, that seeing me reminded you of them. I saw your room empty, and there was no note, and your Jeep and your bike was gone…I knew you weren't coming back. And I couldn't bear to live there without you. So I left."

Logan gripped her shoulders fiercely, seeing for a moment not the poised, self-assured young woman, but the lonely, frightened teenager she had been. "It wasn't your fault, Jubilee. I was wrong to blame you for it. Let it go."

Jubilee leaned on Logan's shoulder, smelled his familiar scent, felt the roughness of his sideburns on her cheek, and felt tears start sliding down her cheek as the huge weight lifted off her shoulders. After a century of blaming herself for their deaths, having the one person she loved most in the whole world tell her it was all right made a load of difference. She returned his embrace.

His apartment was Spartan, severe. Jubilee looked around, her heart aching as she saw that the only decoration in the whole place was an old picture of her sitting in a frame propped against his night table lamp. Smiling sadly, she started to put it in the battered old black bag he had told her to pack his things in. He was in Carey's apartment, packing her things.

A sudden blinding stab of pain low in her belly drove her to her knees with a gasp. It hurt too much to scream. It went away almost as quickly as it had come, and she started to rise again, only to be sent back to the floor with another flash of agony. This time she did scream.

The door to Logan's apartment flew open, and she saw, through the tears of agony that blurred her eyes, a monster duck through the doorway. She stared.

It looked like a huge misshapen robot from out of a movie. It towered over her, measuring perhaps seven feet tall, covered all over with a silvery, metallic armour that Jubilee could have sworn was adamantium. Its chest and back was all one piece; the only parts of him that seemed to present any vulnerability at all was its joints. She raised her hand to try and paff it, unable to call out to Logan in the next apartment for help for the excruciating pain in her stomach.

Her paffs bounced harmlessly off the hard adamantium carapace, and one of its arms rose. In its hand she saw a small silvery device, which he pointed at her and pressed a button on its surface. The crippling agony stabbed her belly again, and she cried out weakly, her arms coming up to cradle her middle. "Target disabled," said an odd, mechanical-sounding voice from the robot's mouth. "Subject Nightshade located and neutralized. Commencing retrieval." A thick tendril of silvery metal extruded from its chest and disconnected itself, dropping to the floor and wriggling in a very snake-like way over to Jubilee. She cringed away from it in terror, but another jolt of pain to her lower stomach from the device it carried made her forget the tendril and concentrate on the pain in her body. The tendril wrapped itself around her, slimming out and lengthening until it could wrap itself firmly around her wrist and ankles.

There was a sudden roar from behind it, and Jubilee heard the unmistakable shriek of metal on metal. Specifically adamantium. The robot-like thing swiveled its entire torso around to meet this new attack, and she heard it recite, mechanically, "Cease interfering with the lawful arrest of this target or you will be neutralized."

"Ain't no way yer gettin' my girl!" Logan roared, and attacked it again. The robot swiveled its lover half around to face Logan, and dropped the small device into a 'pocket' which opened up in its chest, then closed again. The pain never lessened, though. Through eyes blurry with tears of pain, she watched the battle.

Logan dropped to a fighting crouch, eyeing the monstrosity warily. Behind it, he could hear Jubilee crying in pain; the sound drove him nuts. He wanted to get to her, rip off the bonds holding her, and stop her pain…but this behemoth was in his way.

It was made of adamantium. At first glance he had taken it for steel, some bizarre escapee from a movie set somewhere, but when his claws barely dented the thing, he came to the conclusion that it was adamantium. And when it turned to face him, he saw the logo of the United Americas on its chest, and his body went cold. Somehow they had found Jubilee, had tracked her here. This must be some kind of robot police, an upgraded Sentinel, bent on bringing her 'back' to the government.

Not if he could help it. He never took his eyes off the metal 'mask' over the robot's face, and tried to circle around it. Maybe he could maneuver it out of the way so he could reach Jubilee and free her. He assumed it was that silver binding that was causing her to cry so desperately in pain.

He lunged. The monster ducked. He lunged again. Again the monster ducked. Logan lunged again, turning it at the last moment into a feint, and his claws bit into the 'joint' of the robot's left 'hand'. The severed limb fell to the floor, twitching, and he saw blue electricity sparkles dance around the mutilated limb. The robot stared stupidly at its suddenly limb-less arm, and Logan took advantage of its momentary distraction to spring in and cut deeply into the second elbow. He stepped back, out of range of the flailing, cicatrized limbs, and went low to try and slash at the robot's legs.

He was stopped by what felt like a hand on his ankle.

He stared down in disbelief. The severed hand had grabbed hold of his ankle, and was now melting into a puddle of living adamantium that seemed to crawl up his leg. The second severed hand grabbed his other ankle, and stretched out a long tendril to the other ankle. As soon as they connected, they stiffened, and he was effectively hobbled.

A thick tendril captured his wrist, and Logan howled. The monster had regrown the limbs he'd severed! The left arm had morphed into several tentacles, and one of those tentacles were now holding his wrist. His other hand immediately came up to sever the tentacle with his claw, but as soon as he touched it, it wrapped firmly around his claws and refused to let go. It flowed smoothly up to his other wrist, trapping him effectively.

He saw the other arm go liquid, wrapping itself around his shoulder. Helpless to fight, he could only scream in pain as millions of adamantuim nanites burrowed into his skin, through muscle tissue and connective fiber, and delved deeply into the tiny spaces in his joints. His bones were adamantium, and the creature would have a hard time getting through that, but the cartilage in his joints wasn't similarly impenetrable. Blood spurted as his arm fell away, and Logan howled in agony. Jubilee was screaming in distress and pain and terror, as the independently-moving nanites came up and burrowed into Logan's other arm, then dropped Logan's bleeding torso on the floor. The monster reached down again, and Jubilee screamed hoarsely in anguish and grief, "Stop it! Stop it! No, don't…" but the monster was implacable, and Logan was cut cleanly in half, the adamantium nanites burrowing through the cartilage disks in Logan's spine to sever his spinal cord. Jubilee's stomach lurched sickeningly.

Time seemed to slow for her as she saw the spreading pool of blood. He looked at her, eyes unfocused from shock, surprise, pain, and a realization that he was going to die. She began screaming and crying hysterically as the full impact of what had just happened sank into her brain. Logan was dying; he wouldn't be able to survive being dismembered.

"No," she moaned weakly. "No, no, no…" She tried to inch across the floor, to reach him, to get to him one last time…

And then she heard footsteps, and turned to the door, eyes streaming. Tom…and Carl! They were supposed to meet her and Logan here…they mustn't come now… but it was too late. They stood in the doorway, shock and surprise on their faces as they saw the metal monster in the room, saw Jubilee lying on the floor, apparently bound, and saw Logan's headless, limbless torso on the floor. And that was the last thing they saw, as two appendages at the ends of the telescoping tendrils turned into a deadly adamantium blade, slammed into their bodies, hurled them back against the walls, and sent them into eternal darkness.

Jubilee froze, her disbelieving eyes seeing nothing but the bodies around her. Then she began to scream in shock and anguish. The screaming stopped as the robot-like monster struck her across the face with a club he morphed his arms into, then it scooped her up carelessly and tucked her under its arm. Shattering the glass doors calmly, it stepped out onto the small balcony, activated the anti-grav units in its 'feet', and flew off into the darkening sky toward its programmed destination, leaving behind the ruined apartment and the dead bodies.


End file.
